Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am, of course, aware of the pay commission. I am also acutely aware of the fact Defence Forces personnel do not have a collective voice in the way normal workers organised in a trade union would have. There is extreme urgency in this situation. We are operating against the backdrop of a massive 21% reduction in Defence Forces personnel, a huge increase in workload and the fact a third of the people who left in the last five years bought their discharge - that is how desperate they are to get out. It has become a paradigm of austerity that when there are cutbacks, it actually costs more than is saved. In the Naval Service, for example, it costs €100,000 to train somebody to able seaman level, and when they leave, that expertise cannot be replaced. That is the particular crisis we now have and it comes against the backdrop that we are spending multiples of that amount on shiny new ships we cannot afford to staff. It seems ridiculous that we are wasting money on equipment in that way. There is a huge urgency in addressing these matters. Pay is not the only reason people are leaving.

See this speech in context