Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)

One of the options will be a decrease in the number of brigades from two to three and this will be a difficulty. In hindsight, the Minister handled this matter badly. He made a decision to reduce the number of brigades from three to two. He is giving the Chief of Staff and the Secretary General the task of coming up with options which fit into the decision which has already been made. This was the wrong way to go about it and in hindsight, the Minister made a mistake. It should have been announced there was a decision to reorganise the Defence Forces and that all options were up for discussion. At that point there should have been engagement will all the stakeholders but that did not happen in this case and that was a mistake.

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