Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There will always be people who have different views, but the context here is a Permanent Defence Force of 9,500 people. A decision was made to close four barracks, as well as restructuring and reorganising to reflect the new, agreed strength levels of the Defence Forces. It was to ensure that we had barracks and structures that were full, busy and fully operational, as opposed to trying to spread them across a large infrastructure having reduced the overall number within the Defence Forces. That is what happened.

The Deputy referred to our recent symposium on defence in Farmleigh, but this issue was not a big feature of that discussion.

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