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

The Commission on the Defence Forces was established on foot of a commitment in the programme for Government. As Minister for Defence, I welcomed the publication of the report of the commission on 9 February last.  The commission has undertaken a significant body of work that encompassed wide-ranging terms of reference.  The report contains 69 main recommendations with a large number of sub-recommendations totalling 130 individual recommendations.  It recommends significant changes for the Defence Forces and defence provision more generally in Ireland. It covers high-level Defence Forces structures, defence capabilities, organisation, culture and human resources, the Reserve Defence Force and funding.

Given the significant recommendations contained in the report, detailed consideration of these recommendations has been undertaken over the past four months by my Department and the Defence Forces.  This has involved significant interdepartmental consultation and I and my officials have engaged with key stakeholders, including the representative associations, to ascertain their views. Following this engagement, I intend to return to the Government with a proposed response to the commission’s recommendations and a high-level action plan before the summer recess.

Providing for the defence of the State is a fundamental role of any Government and I firmly believe this is an opportunity to have a mature debate around the type of defence provision that we require and I will very much welcome deliberation, debate and discussion around that.

I am on record in this House as saying I hoped to bring this report to the Government in the month of June. We are running out of time to deliver on that, so this is now going to be brought to the Government in early July. My focus is more about getting the content right and getting Government agreement than it is about whether it is a week before or after a deadline was set. However, I assure the Deputy this will be done in the next couple of weeks. I hope it will be done next week but if not it will be done shortly after that. We are ready to bring recommendations to Government but are still consulting a number of other Ministers to finalise some of the detail.

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