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

All I can say to the Deputy on that is we will not have to wait for much longer to get recommendations from a very experience group of people, led by a very able former Secretary General of the Departments of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Justice and Equality. I would be very surprised if they recommended a reduction in numbers in any of the services within the Defence Forces. In fact, I expect it will be quite the opposite.

We have capacity challenges and problems that need to be addressed throughout all three sectors of the Defence Forces - Naval Service, Air Corps and Army. We are investing significantly at the moment but I look forward to a debate on the back of that report, which will outline the levels of ambition required for Ireland to respond in a comprehensive and necessary way to the defence challenges every sovereign country needs to face up to. Historically, that discussion has sometimes been too confined in the context of the defence debate in Ireland and I hope the commission report will allow us to break out of that.

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