Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will not be doing that. The Minister of State, Deputy Kehoe, got his information from a Naval Service briefing on Friday at Naval Service headquarters in Haulbowline. The flag officer was also present at that briefing and the Defence Forces press office confirmed only last night that two vessels - LÉ Eithneand LÉ Orla- are going into planned maintenance.

Maintenance is not the sole issue, however. There is also an issue about staffing levels and the Naval Service is understaffed and, for that reason, there is going to be a change of practice. Where boats are put into maintenance or into reserve, the crews will then be redeployed to vessels that are in service. It is never the case that all nine vessels are at sea. It is often the case that vessels are in maintenance or in refit or in dock. Rather than having a situation which has been the case for the past couple of months where crews have been thinly spread across a larger number of vessels - and I have been on these vessels - there will be a smaller number of vessels which are now fully staffed. That also makes sense from a retention point of view because, where staff are stretched across a large number of vessels, it becomes much harder for them to do their jobs. This practice will help with retention.

In the meantime, we will continue to recruit and make efforts to retain the staff in the Naval Service, with a view to putting a seventh vessel back in service later in the year, if possible.

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