Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is quite a useful response and will provide some measure of reassurance to the hundreds of impacted troops and their families. On a more general note, I take the Minister's point that we want to have young soldiers. We also want to have young gardaí, firefighters and prison officers but entrants to those three professions are not subjected to the same types of contracts as military personnel. In that context, we need to overhaul the contractual employment situation for Irish troops. When people join the Irish Prison Service, the fire service or An Garda Síochána, they get to stay for life and there are incentivised early retirement schemes in place to move people along. That is the model we should be using for the Defence Forces. Rather than have very restricted and finite terms and conditions that lead to very precarious employment situations, we should move towards the Garda model for our Defence Forces.

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