Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I propose to take Questions Nos. 49, 57 and 424 together. From my previous time in the Department of Defence when the Deputy held the purse strings, I was not alone in caring about the Naval Service as he was extremely supportive at the time. I recognise that. Coming from a coastal county, he understands why that is so important as do I. I am frustrated and concerned that we do not have the capacity to put ships to sea or as many as we should be putting to sea because we do not have enough personnel to crew them. We will fix that. The first step in that has been designing a scheme which is really about retention within the Defence Forces and the Naval Service to get a commitment over the coming years for people in the Naval Service to stay in the Naval Service and be willing to go to sea. We are willing to pay them to do that - €5,000 for each of those two years, €10,000 in total for a commitment to go to sea for two of the next four years, which is how the rotation works.

We have tried to include as many Naval Service personnel who will be on ships as possible in that scheme. We needed to set some parameters for qualification. Therefore, people who are in their first three years in the Naval Service, many of whom will be still in some form of training, are not eligible, but everybody else is. If we have six ships with approximately 50 per ship, that is 300 people. I would expect that 200 or more will be eligible for the scheme, but the make-up of the crews and how long they have been in the Naval Service will depend on the cycle. We are working to try to get as many people into the scheme as we possibly can.

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