Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

A number of claims have been received by my Department regarding people who might have been on leave and who were not able to get back. Those claims have been received from various individuals in varying cases. They state that as a consequence of the travel restrictions on movements back and forth to combat the spread of Covid-19, and specifically UN Under-Secretary-General Jean-Pierre Lacroix's announcement that there would be no rotations until after 30 June, these people were denied the opportunity to return to their deployment. This matter is under consideration and there will be full engagement with the Defence Forces representative associations through the conciliation and arbitration scheme. I am aware of this issue and it was unfortunate that people who came home for holidays or took leave during that time were unable to get back. I am not able to give the Deputy the exact number of people affected because the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, UNDOF, was able to do the rotation as planned and very successfully right before the real lockdown came into force. Unfortunately some people were home on leave when the UN announced that there would be no rotations and that for people who were home on holidays or who were due to go home on holidays, rotations would be delayed. Unfortunately, it was out of my hands. As I said in my opening statement, this affected over 100,000 personnel from various countries. We were lucky enough to be able to negotiate and discuss getting our troops out earlier than had been planned with the UN.

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