Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I propose to take Questions Nos. 14, 27, 59 and 74 together. The Commission on the Defence Forces was established on foot of a commitment in the programme for Government, and its report was published on 9 February 2022. The commission has undertaken a significant body of work, encompassing wide-ranging terms of reference. It recommends significant changes for the Defence Forces and defence provision in Ireland and 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 was undertaken over a period of five months by the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces. Following this engagement, a high-level action plan and a memorandum for Government were brought to Government and approved on 12 July 2022. This involved the approval of a move to Level of Ambition 2, LOA2, as set out in the capability framework devised by the Commission on the Defence Forces. This will result in the Defence budget rising from €1.1 billion to €1.5 billion, in 2022 prices, by 2028, which is the largest increase in Defence funding in the history of the State. This will allow for the required substantial transformation and investment in recruitment and equipment that were identified by the commission. The budget for 2023 included an increase of €67 million over the 2022 budget. That includes an almost 25% increase in capital funding and demonstrates our commitment to supporting the transformation of the Defence Forces. The move to LOA2 will require an additional 2,000 personnel over and above the current establishment of 9,500. Work has already commenced on this with the recently announced Be More recruitment campaign.

The high-level action plan set out initial implementation and oversight structures. An implementation oversight group has been established which met for the first time on 3 October. Subsequently, Julie Sinnamon was appointed as the independent chair of the implementation oversight group with a second meeting taking place on 17 November and a third meeting taking place on 27 January. A high-level steering board has been established, to which end the Department of the Taoiseach will oversee the implementation. A civil-military implementation management office, IMO, has been established to support the implementation of the overall transformation programme required to implement the recommendations. The initial focus is on the implementation of the 38 early actions as set out in the high-level action plan and as I detailed earlier, to date approximately two thirds of these 38 actions have been achieved.

I think I have already dealt with some of them.

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