Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputies Ó Snodaigh and Buckley.

I welcome what the previous speakers have said. I would like to add my voice of support for medals and recognition of those who fought at the Siege of Jadotville. It is necessary that we give due respect to our Defence Force.

In a previous sitting in this House when the Minister did not have responsibility for defence, I requested that he would make contact with the then Minister with responsibility for defence on the basis of getting the Air Corps helicopter to deal with a number of serious fires that we have in the Cooley Peninsula over the summer. Luckily, that happened and it worked out well. I thank both the Minister and the Air Corps.

It was said by others in this Chamber that from time to time when we face great difficulties we call on the Defence Forces. The Minister himself visited Dundalk to see off a number of soldiers to whom I wish the best of luck who are on the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force in the Gollan Heights and are carrying out necessary peacekeeping operations. I cannot but add my voice to what many Members have said in relation to the ongoing travesty that is the case of pay for members of the Defence Forces. We have all heard the horror stories. It is not only the pay. It is the limited duty payment. In many cases, sometimes families of the military have to engage the services of Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection in the form of social welfare. I have heard many soldiers who had entered into the service in Dundalk tell others that it is not now the same option, even for them. They would talk about the lack of pay. They would also say that the pension position is not as good as it was previously. We have a serious issue here that we must deal with otherwise we will not be able to retain the soldiers that we have. This is a necessity. I would ask that the Minister put the difficulty of soldiers' pay at the top of his priorities in defence.

The Minister has another brief. In a previous incarnation, in a time gone by, which none of us would wish to see again, we would have had soldiers engaged in operations on the Border. On the previous occasion I spoke to the Minister in relation to the issue of Brexit, we had not quite seen the legislation but the UK Internal Market Bill is all that was promised in relation to a breach of international law and circumvention of the Irish protocol and the withdrawal agreement. I welcome many of the statements that the Minister has made. He has been utterly forthright. We need to ensure the European Union and the Government remain forthright. Sometimes we are second guessing what the British Prime Minister, Mr. Boris Johnson, is at. Other than it being reprehensible, the Bill gives Mr. Johnson no creditability as a negotiator. However, we need to ensure the net result are the best mitigations possible in relation to Brexit. If we are to believe what certain sections of the British Conservative Party and Mr. Johnson are saying, I call on the Government to look at the possibility that we could face a nightmare situation where they cut a hole in the withdrawal agreement and the Irish protocol and that whatever protections anyone believed are there are no longer there. We could be looking at a disaster. It is a disastrous situation, particularly in regard to places outside Dundalk, such as Faughart where it meets Jonesborough, where the Concession Road meets the Castleblayney Road, and where Culloville and Crossmaglen meet the Shela area. We have numerous Border crossings. We have, as I stated previously, a particular history, and we cannot tolerate any possibility of a hard border infrastructure and we need to ensure that, whatever happens, this is not the case.

I was quite happy to hear members of other political parties state in the past while that if the British Government was to go down this road, it would be a game changer. The Government needs to get real and straight in relation to the fact that if the British Government goes down this road, the only real mitigation will be some form of unity. It literally will be a case of giving people on this island, and particularly those in the North, a choice of staying within the European Union or leaving to operate in what is a dysfunctional so-called United Kingdom.

We support the Bill as a tidying-up exercise for many defence matters. The big issue remaining in the area is that of Defence Forces pay and its inadequacy, which must be dealt with or retention and recruitment will continue to be a problem for a force that we need.

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