Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

How does the Minister of State explain the following comment from one member of the Defence Forces?:

We're only a priority for the State when the State wants to highlight it themselves worldwide. We are far from a priority when it comes to the welfare of our troops, their wages, their conditions, their health.

Another member talks about the fact that he earned approximately €150 per week more between 2005 and 2007, when he was able to get a mortgage, than he earns today. This is the reality, and this is why the Department is unable to recruit and retain people and they are flooding out of the Defence Forces. The Department buys new naval vessels but does not have the personnel to put on them, so the vessels go out to sea but I hear reports that they then cannot do the fisheries patrols because they do not have enough personnel to board ships. The Department is buying new CASA airplanes, but I understand there are only three CASA pilots, some of whom may even leave, yet it takes years to train these pilots. Where will we get the pilots to fly the planes? It is interesting the Minister of State does not have the figures for the result of the recruitment drive. There are all these expressions of interest, but then they decrease to a tiny number because the applicants discover what the pay and conditions are and will not touch the positions with a bargepole.

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