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

First, I met RACO on this and other issues last week and we had a discussion on it. However, the process that involves civil and military management needs to conclude first in terms of understanding the Chief of Staff and the General Staff's concerns around ensuring we have a functioning military and learning from international experience around what is and is not appropriate, where derogations from the working time directive are concerned, to facilitate the running of a military. I understand that process is close to concluding. Once it does, we will go into a process of consultation with the representative bodies to ensure everybody understands the basis of what is being agreed and the rationale for it. That is reasonable. Of course we will ensure the representative bodies are part of that process and we will try to get agreement then to ensure we are moving ahead on the basis of a clear understanding of how the working time directive will be fully applied across the Defence Forces. Then we obviously need to draft legislation to make that law.

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