Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is my first time addressing the Minister for Defence so I congratulate him on his portfolio and hope he will have a successful term. I support this Bill which brings about a number of required changes to existing defence laws. I pay particular tribute to the many men and women of our Permanent Defence Force who step up time and again. They helped when there was flooding in Cloonlara and Ennis in County Clare, where I am from, and more recently during the Covid pandemic when those men and women supported our front-line staff. I will elaborate on that in a few moments.

The numbers in our Defence Forces continue to fall, it is sad to say, and Covid-19 will add to the challenge of recruitment. The commitments on defence in the programme for Government urgently need to be acted upon, and I hope they will be a priority for the Minister as he takes on this portfolio. The single greatest asset of the Defence Forces must be their personnel, and yet numbers are now seriously below strength and it is time to rebuild significantly. The decline over recent years left the forces with just 8,423 members at the end of March of this year, some 1,077 below the current agreed strength. In 2019, turnover reached an unsustainable level of close to 10%. This could be considered an existential crisis and cannot be allowed to continue. The retention crisis means that the Defence Forces are experiencing significant underspend of their annual budget allocation despite the scale of this crisis. It is vital that Ireland recommits to its Defence Forces and defence capability.

I am glad that the programme for Government commits to establishing an independent commission on defence. The commission will look at the pay, allowances and composition of the Defence Forces and consider recruitment, retention and career progression. I note that the commission will result in the formation of a permanent pay review body, and it is important that all recommendations made by the committee and their subsequent implementation must be consistent with national public sector wage policy.

It has been mooted that the pay commission would be established before the end of the 2020 and report back to the Government within 12 months. I would like to know where that is at now. It seems to me that, for far too long, the focus in Ireland has been more on investing in high-tech equipment for the Army as opposed to the actual personnel who wear the uniforms, their recruitment and retention. That is the main causes of the recruitment crisis we see at the moment. I have heard of some instances where troops are expected to work extra hours in the evenings and at weekends for as little as €2 or €3 per hour. I know of one recent instance when the Army brought quite a number of its personnel from around the country to help the HSE offload containers of personal protective equipment, PPE, that the Government had procured from China and other places in Asia from its resource headquarters. Some of those soldiers were paid and understood that they could take home that pay but were taxed significantly. The pay that they took home ended up being minuscule and those members of the Defence Forces felt that they had stepped up to the role at a time of crisis and what they took home to their families was negligible.

I hope that the Minister can intervene in the case of unfilled positions within the Defence Forces, across the Army, Navy and Air Corps. There are currently 1,076 unfilled positions, 882 of which relate to those who left the Defence Forces last year.

I also want briefly to raise the issue of medals. Some 27 soldiers from the Jadotville siege were nominated for medals and only eight of those men are still alive. I hope that their bravery will be recognised by this Government. I know that parchments were issued to them last year and there has been much talk in recent times of medals being awarded. Those medals need to be awarded before any more of those men pass away and go to eternity.

An Army veteran living in my county brought an issue to my attention in August. A lot of consultation will be required on this because it divides opinion, but he suggested that those who served with the Irish Army along the Border over the course of the Troubles, right up to the time of the Good Friday Agreement, should be awarded a medal or some kind of recognition for the duty and service they gave to the State at that time and the daily dangers which they faced. There is a counterargument to that. Some would say that was home service and does not merit a medal but I hope the Department, as it continues to consider whether to award medals to those who served at Jadotville, would also engage with veteran groups, particularly those who served the Irish Army during the Troubles, to see whether we could formally recognise in some way their service during those turbulent years.

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