Mr. Gerard Guinan:

Yes. This is our bottom line: we will fight this one way or the other if it comes about. We will be forced to do so. We do not want to have to do this. We want to encourage young men and women in this State to join the Defence Forces. It is an excellent career. It has great potential for the people who come in. They need a strong voice and they need adequate and appropriate representation. Nothing in our past indicates there is any reason to bring about, at this point in time, those measures with which we have a problem. Nobody can point to a situation and say former members of PDFORRA broke the law, or were political and did this, that or the other, or that they assembled and addressed political campaigns in a manner that was highly inappropriate. Nobody can show this to us. We cannot understand what is the catalyst for the provisions as they exist in the legislation. We simply ask that the Department removes them and that the committee, by its best efforts, seeks to influence the Department to have it amended.