Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

That gets to the crux of the matter. The ambition of having 6,000 new recruits in a number of years is welcome, as is the vision the Minister painted of Haulbowline. The report of the Commission on the Defence Forces is comprehensive and has done a great deal of good work but we are at the point now where our Defence Forces are down to bare bones.

At 35 years of age, I have any number of friends who used to be in the Defence Forces because they have left and gone elsewhere. We need to create conditions in which people will want to stay in the Defence Forces and believe things will get better. There is work to be done by the State to present that picture and say things will get better, but also to make them get better as quickly as possible. I do not doubt for a moment the commitment the Minister has to this, but people just do not believe it because they have been mistreated in terms of pay and conditions for so long that morale in our Defence Forces is on its knees and there is a job to be done to build that up quickly before it gets to the point of no return.

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