Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion from Fianna Fáil. It highlights how the work, pay and conditions of our Defence Forces have been deteriorating over the years. We have been warning about this long-standing crisis but it has not improved.

Our Defence Forces are among the few State organisations that have a track record of which we can be proud. Sadly, the esteem in which we hold them does not translate into remuneration and work conditions. The remuneration and work conditions do not suggest that the State actually respects or values the work of our personnel. According to Central Statistics Office figures, those in the Defence Forces are the lowest paid workers in the public service. I do not understand why that is the case. At times they work punishingly long hours in unenviable conditions but they get little in return.

Deputy Clare Daly highlighted recently that a member of the Defence Forces, who had just returned from deployment in Operation Sophia, worked a 12-hour day at sea, seven days a week, with two or three 24-hour duties thrown in. He worked approximately 80 hours a week for an extra €125 on top of his basic salary of €435 per week. That is a total of €560 for a 40-hour week with 40 hours overtime. It is little wonder that we hear about 50 sailors sleeping on ships in their time off because they cannot afford rents in Cork due to the housing crisis. Some 85% of our Defence Forces earn less than the average industrial wage, and it seems they do not have much to look forward to from the Public Service Pay Commission, as leaks have suggested that the average soldier could be looking at a 1% pay increase. As the Minister of State is well aware, turnover inside the organisation is at unsustainable levels, with many experienced and highly trained members leaving on a regular basis. This is happening while millions of euro are being spent on equipment and this expenditure is set to increase further in the coming years as a result of us joining in participation in permanent structured co-operation, PESCO, which Fianna Fáil unfortunately signed up to as well.

The crisis in retention and recruitment has more than just pay at its root. There have been reports of civilians in the Department of Defence treating the general staff of the Defence Forces with contempt. There is also a lack of moral justification for some recent deployments, such as Operation Sophia and the operation on the Golan Heights, for example. In the Golan Heights, our Defence Forces have sat and watched the Israeli Defence Forces give air and artillery support to al-Qaeda forces in Syria, which have caused untold chaos in the region. They also repeatedly say that the Golan Heights will never be returned, which was the point of that UN mission originally. The Minister of State has acknowledged that our role in the Mediterranean was, in its latest form, a military mission, and was no longer about search and rescue but about sending desperate people back to the places from which they desperately wanted to escape. Now we are sending 14 additional Defence Forces personnel to Mali to give support to the French in their neocolonial war to protect uranium, oil, and gold interests in the region. These are under threat from groups coming down from fighting in the north of the continent and recruiting among the desperately poor in the northern Sahel region. If we really cared about peace in this region, we would stop extracting revenue from it by being a tax haven for extractive global corporations and we would oppose western intervention wars that are really the source of the Mali conflict. Likewise, we also would stop Shannon from being used as a US military base to create untold destruction in other countries, which does not make any sense at all.

I heard the Minister of State's opening statement. I also heard the Taoiseach today when he was replying to Deputy Healy and I do not accept their arguments. They say there is only so much money to go around and while that is true, I am not so old - though God knows I am older than most people in here - that I do not remember when the Minister's party was regarded as the one most prudent with money. The Taoiseach talked today about the necessity to be prudent with money. However, this is the same Government that has stood over the national children's hospital. I have argued in here on eight occasions that the Government could save itself a minimum of half a billion euro by going back to the drawing board, renegotiating the contract and changing the form of contract. The Government does not even know where it is going to end up at the moment or how much it is going to cost because the contract is wrong. It is wrong and the Government has the option of redoing it. The Government is wasting all that money but it does not want to give members of the Defence Forces a proper wage. It does not make any sense, and it does not add up. I am not even talking about the €3 billion for broadband or what is going on in NAMA. No-one wants to know about NAMA, but it has cost this State about €20 billion. Everyone says that it will go away in time and that it is history now but the amount of money that has been wasted by the Government is frightening. We are expecting the Defence Forces to work for less than the rest of us. How many people who work for the State in this country are getting as little as members of the Defence Forces? The Minister of State can defend what the Government is doing until the cows come home but no-one is explaining to me why members of the Defence Forces are paid less than everybody else. It does not make any sense. We all say we are proud of them, that we all think they do wonderful work and are a great credit to the country and then we pay them the least. Where is the explanation for that, because I still am not hearing it?

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