Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

An element of the international trend in many countries has been that the numbers in permanent defence forces have been dramatically reduced and replaced by similar numbers in the reserve defence forces. I would not be happy to go down that path. There is a requirement for a particular level. We have been discussing that in terms of numbers, but I think we should be discussing it in terms of capabilities of the Permanent Defence Force, especially in respect of its interoperability requirements, such as when members of the Permanent Defence Force are operating with Finnish troops on foreign missions, as we were in Chad, and in other UN and EU sponsored missions. In some cases, troops from other countries tend to have a substantial number of reserves, which is something that appears to work quite well. Nevertheless, we need to maintain the basic requirement for the Permanent Defence Force and then examine what we need from the reserve.

The question tabled by Deputy Stanton encapsulates the nature of the challenge, which is to figure out exactly the nature of what we require from the Reserve Defence Force. We may require three or four things or more. The pilot programme was entered into quite properly, and we have major lessons to learn from that.

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