Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The pace of legislation is very slow in this area. We have ongoing breaches of the working time directive and it was reported that 146,000 days of annual leave have been lost in the past five years among members of the Defence Forces. That is an enormous breach of this country's statutory process and the fact we are not seeking to rectify it very quickly does not give confidence to representative organisations. As they argue, amending regulations will not give confidence to them or their members on the upholding of the law. RACO has indicated its members lost 9.6 days of annual leave each and PDFORRA estimates that more than 6,000 members lost in the region of 37,000 days of annual leave in 2016 alone because the force was overstretched and members were constantly plugging gaps. We know, with the removal of the Western Brigade, how travel time has exacerbated problems in working life with those members.

The State is standing over a breach of the law in the form of the working time directive without giving any certainty, even today, about when this will be rectified. This is apart from restating the position of the Government in 2016 concerning the amendment of the Act. We cannot have this continuing at a pre-drafting stage, as it has been there for two years.

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