Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Despite the recovery in public finances and a recruitment campaign, numbers are down again in any event. The Minister of State’s focus is far too much on the recruitment side. While it is essential, the retention of specialists and their hard-earned skills is paramount. There are 28 recruits in training with the Air Corps, with eight due to graduate in quarter 4 of 2017. The Minister considers this as an adequate response to the Air Corps staffing shortage. None of these eight trainees will be able to act as co-pilots of a helicopter or a fixed-wing CASA until the summer of 2019 at the earliest. The training cost for a pilot is €1.5 million. It takes six years to train a bomb disposal officer. Specialist Naval Service deck officers require years of intensive training. Specialist Army Ranger Wing officers are front-line responders to terrorist threats. They similarly require long years of training at home and abroad, with lengthy operational experience needed.

The Minister of State has let this matter reach crisis point and the recruitment campaigns for this year and the next two years will not bridge the gap. He needs to put together a serious plan for retention of personnel because the cost of the State of losing these people is far more than the cost of training. What is the Minister of State’s plan to retain personnel? What will he do now and what will he do next year to retain highly-qualified people we have in the Defence Forces? Taking a new people will not bridge the gap that exists.

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