Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

The opportunistic motion tabled by Fianna Fáil deserves no credibility coming from the party responsible for the economic cataclysm that has impacted on our people. It starkly confirms that despite that party's unprecedented defeat in the general election and the passage of time, no lessons of any nature have been learned. All the more perplexing is the party's failure to acknowledge that previous programmes of barrack rationalisation provided funding that, together with pay savings, provided essential resources required for infrastructure, training area development and equipment procurement.

Since 1998, a total of €84.98 million has been realised from the disposal of six of the barracks closed by Fianna Fáil-led Governments. Agreement in principle has been reached to dispose of two more of these. Notwithstanding the extremely depressed state of the property market, it now appears that the round of barrack closures effected by Fianna Fáil in 2009 will ultimately yield more than €5 million. It is contradictory for Fianna Fáil Deputies to claim the current barrack structure should be maintained given Ireland's commitment to the United Nations. Mention was made of some members of the Defence Forces in southern Lebanon at present. In practice, nothing could be further from the truth. To support our UN contribution, we must avoid spreading our resources too thinly and starving the Defence Forces of the appropriate investment in equipment and training which will allow them to continue to meet the standards necessary to participate in overseas missions. Let me be quite clear: unless we prioritise the resources available to the Defence Forces into the appropriate areas, we will not be able to send troops overseas in the future because they will not have the appropriate equipment and training. We must do the best we can within the constrained resource envelope available. We cannot have it both ways. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. To try to pretend otherwise, as Deputies on the other side of the House are doing, is misleading and they know that.

The standard of financial analysis underpinning the Opposition motion is depressingly familiar. It is the type of analysis that brought us to the brink of financial disaster. The Exchequer receipts have fallen by approximately a third. What is the Opposition's prescription? It is to reprimand the Government for daring to think about a measure that some of the Opposition applied widely when in government to effect efficiencies.

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