Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday we were told that the Defence Forces would get €18.5 million extra in current expenditure in budget 2019. That is to deal with pay, training, retention strategies, human resources, HR, strategies and all the things that are so desperately needed to stop the haemorrhaging of trained staff from our Defence Forces. What planet is the Government living on? Did it notice the dignified gathering of retired and current Defence Forces personnel who assembled outside here last month, the people who highlighted the fact that there are people in our Naval Service sleeping on boats because they cannot afford accommodation and that Army families are reliant on the family income supplement, FIS, because they cannot put a roof over their heads or a meal on the table while the husband or wife goes out to serve this country? It is not as if the Government does not have the money because in the same budget that it gave a paltry €18 million to deal with those issues it has given €29 million to deal with capital expenditure in our Defence Forces. In each year between 2019 and 2021 capital expenditure is going to go up while current expenditure on our Defence Forces will remain static at a level that is much lower than the one put forward in the depths of austerity in 2013. What is going on?

I tried to put some of these issues to the Tánaiste last week. I asked if it was a case of all the money going on toys for big boys because that is actually this budget is. The Government is putting €250 million of the capital budget into a new vessel for the Naval Service when it has nobody to crew it, when morale in the Naval Service is on its knees. It is ridiculous. I tried to put to the Tánaiste last week that there is a meltdown in our Naval Service that the Government is moving away from core values that the Naval Service was set up for, maritime defence and the fisheries protection. If I was a member of the Naval Service, when morale is already on the floor, I would have been absolutely gutted by the reply of the Tánaiste last week, to miss and even laugh at what has been long established as the core principle of the Naval Service, maritime defence and fisheries protection. Instead, in trying to answer me the lauded Operation Sophia. We have a Naval Service of 1,094 members, 54 members of which are involved in Operation Sophia. The 95% of Naval Service members would have been surprised at the response of the Tánaiste during Leader's Questions last week, that the work they do is in his opinion secondary or somehow less important than the work done in the Mediterranean. They would be particularly confused in the context of the White Paper on Defence produced, ironically, when he was the Minister for Defence, which describes fisheries protection as the day-to-day task of the Naval service with secondary roles including "to provide general maritime patrolling and will be in a position to respond to, for example, an aid to the civil power request, a pollution incident, or a search and rescue or recovery mission." There was no mention at all of military operations in the Mediterranean.

It appears that the Tánaiste does not understand what the Naval Service does or, even more sinister, that a decision has been taken to change the role of the Naval Service without any involvement by the men and women of the service or this House. It seems that he has been listening to people who talk about us having the best little navy in the world while, at the same time, the reality on the ground belies that statement. Operation Sophia, for starters, is not a humanitarian mission. The document establishing the operation states: "The Union shall conduct a military crisis management operation contributing to the disruption of the business model of human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Southern Central Mediterranean." It is a military crisis management operation, not a humanitarian mission.

When we moved the resolution in this House, the Dáil's approval was sought to redeploy Naval Service vessels from humanitarian search and rescue operations to security and interception operations. I found it shocking for the Tánaiste to come back and say that the work of our naval forces in protecting our coastal waters and our fisheries was, somehow, subsidiary. What was even more shocking was that he said, in complete and utter contrast to the reality, that no ship would go to sea if there were safety issues for the crew. That ignores the reality today that it is precisely because ships are going to sea with safety issues for the crew that these issues, for the first time in naval history, have entered the public domain. I refer to the fact that ships have not been going out and have not been capable of being crewed to go out to police our waters. This is not a green over blue conflict or anything like that. It is a recognition of the fact that not only are ships not going out, but just the other day a ship was sent out to sea even though it had scaffolding around its engine. That scaffolding was put in place during maintenance work on the engine and not removed. It blocked an emergency exit and ended up injuring two seamen.

There is a devastating shortage of trained naval personnel. While the Tánaiste might reply that staffing is at 92%, I assure the House that is utter nonsense because not all naval personnel are equal. Sending ships out to sea with people who have never been on a ship previously, but counting them to make up the minimum numbers, is not securing the safety of our naval personnel. The shortage of able seamen has become so acute that the higher naval command has taken ordinary seamen, who are basically apprentices and, in some instances, have never even set foot on a ship, and called them able seamen, partly qualified, PQ. Hey presto, somebody is put on a boat and put out to sea. That is what has been done instead of addressing the issue, being honest about the shortage and calling it what it is. That shortage is a result of the appalling working conditions to which naval personnel are subject.

The Government anchors down and does not do anything other than perpetuate the myth that we have a Naval Service in this State. The men and women on the front line are telling us we do not. Their lives and their working conditions have been undermined to such an extent that, for the first time in the history of this State, we do not have a Naval Service. Nothing in this budget has addressed that. The situation is critical. The point I tried to make to the Tánaiste last week was that this is not just about pay. That was ignored and the problem has been exacerbated by the budget. Pay is important. We know that our Defence Forces' personnel need more funding. They do, of course, need that but there is much more at stake. It is about chaos, mismanagement, cover up and denial.

That is the root of the crisis in the Naval Service. The chaotic mismanagement was on full display last week when a directive came down from the officer in charge of the personnel management section abolishing the 72 hours' notice that applies before sailors go on duty. It was then hastily rescinded. The word is now out that the two years at sea and two years ashore model, or whatever has been applied throughout the history of our Naval Service, might be abolished to be replaced with a three years at sea and a one year ashore model. This is a rumour but how would a man or a woman working in our Naval Service feel with that type of attitude hanging over his or her head? Is it any wonder that people are leaving in droves? I refer to people returning from a tour of duty aboard ship thinking they are going to be reunited with their families, and then being told that they are going to be press-ganged on to another ship just to give the illusion that we have enough people to cover our bases. It is an absolute disgrace. Who would stay in a job like that? To say that it is an issue of pay is simply denigrating the crisis that is really there.

These men and women would all put their shoulders to the wheel if there was a crisis and this State was attacked. They are, however, being asked to do it to keep up an appearance that we have a Naval Service. That is while the systemic crisis that exists is being ignored. If it is bad for men, it is even worse for women. Why would women stay in such a family-unfriendly environment like that? Why would they stay in a job where a spy hole is discovered in their shower room and management does not even bother to tell them about it after it has been discovered? It is a job where no woman in 25 years has been promoted to chief petty officer. Who would stay in a job like that? That is especially the case when nobody in power even seems to admit the problems that exist, let alone solve them. It is absolutely catastrophic. This budget failed to address what should have been, and what is, a wake-up call for the Government.

When the Government wakes up, it will be too late. It is not possible to replace personnel who have been trained for three, four and five years. That expertise is just going to be washed down the drain. Responsibility cannot just be handed over to a new recruit. It does not work like that. Our Naval Service is hanging on a thread. Shame on those in authority in our Defence Forces. They have not articulated the desire of their members. They have reinvented themselves now, somehow, as champions of the pay and conditions of Defence Forces personnel. However, their choice of furthering prestige projects and to cosy up to the big boys in the EU has led to the personnel on the front line being the collateral damage. The budget was a terrible missed opportunity.

On the issue of pensions, Ireland is currently on track to have the highest pension age in the OECD in 2028 at 68 years of age. This increase results from a unilateral decision taken by Fine Gael and Labour at the behest of the troika. On top of that, there are now plans to change how people qualify for a pension from 2020. The issue of home carers has not been addressed. The Government has attempted to change the configuration and the total contributions approach to 40 years as opposed to 30 years under the 2010 national pensions framework. The public consultation about these changes was an absolute joke. The document that was published was riddled with miscalculations. The Government has had to admit that in responses to parliamentary questions I tabled. Public opinion was elicited through SurveyMonkey. That is something secondary school students use in their projects.

To make a comparison, while the Government, in this misnamed consultation carried out over the summer, received 270 responses, there were 16,000 responses in the consultation on personal possession of drugs. Let us be clear that this was not a proper consultation. What is being proposed is different from what was proposed in 2010. The problems are just going to be kicked down the road. While the Government is giving the illusion of dealing with the home carers credit while, at the same time, not doing so, the position will worsen for people who left the workplace because of unemployment or periods of illness.

It is absolutely critical the public have an opportunity to engage on the State pension situation. I am beginning to wonder if the Government hates people who are getting older. As somebody in that bracket, I am starting to get a little bit scared. The consultation on the proposed auto-enrolment pension system is also ongoing. The core principle of that is that everyone is encouraged to achieve pension adequacy, meaning a retirement income of 60% of one's pre-retirement income. That is a very good idea, and everybody would go along with it. However, the Government wants to achieve it by forcing people to hand over a portion of their salaries to private contribution pension schemes without their consent and with no opt-out for the first seven months. It also wants to lob a State subsidy at private pension funds on top of that. Auto-enrolment suggests that every employee is forced to donate 1% of his or her salary to a private pension for a minimum of seven months, whether he or she wants to or not. If he or she wants to stay in, he or she can increase his or her payments to 6% and the Government will add an incentive. It has been suggested that €1 will be contributed to the private pension for every €3 a person contributes. It means that a person on €25,000 will get €82 from the Government while someone on €70,000 is going to get €233 - essentially, the lower paid worker is subsidising the higher paid worker. The Government will also incentivise people if they contribute the equivalent of an additional 2% of their salaries. Someone earning €200,000 would receive a State subsidy of €4,700, part of which will be paid, let us not forget, by low-paid workers who cannot afford to make extra voluntary contributions. It is an absolutely appalling situation, and is feathering the nest of the private pension industry which already massively benefits from the fact that higher paid workers get so much more in tax relief than ordinary paid workers. It is a continuation of everything this Government stands for. It is Robin Hood in reverse, and amounts to a feathering of the nests of those who have more resources at the expense of those with less. It is an absolute disgrace, and the consultation must be extended on that point.

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