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

The Minister of State told me in reply to a parliamentary question just before Christmas that the effective strength of the Reserve Defence Forces stood at 1,745. As with the Permanent Defence Forces, the Reserve has been in decline for years. While the Reserve Defence Forces had 2,280 effective members at the end of 2015, this had reduced to 2,049 by the end of 2016 and to 1,975 at the end of March 2017. The agreed established strength of the Reserve is 4,069.

While the Minister of State mentioned that he wants to have specialist training for the Reserve Defence Forces, to value them and to recruit them, the reality is represented by what the Reserve Defence Forces said themselves at the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence in 2017 when they said that there are elements within the Department that they feel "simply could not care less about the Reserve Defence Forces." Some of the issues that were mentioned at that committee meeting need to be addressed at a policy level because the numbers are diminishing and the Minister of State needs to seriously address it or we will not have a proper Reserve.

See this speech in context