Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am very glad that the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, is here this afternoon because I know he is genuinely interested defence affairs. He was the Opposition spokesperson for defence and was also Minister of State at the Department of Defence for the first two and a half years of the Government's term. I presume he has looked through the defence portfolio relating to the budget. It is very good to have him in the Chamber.

The recurring theme of my contribution will be one of hope. Unfortunately, however, it is the wrong kind of hope. There is this wonderful phrase which says, "It's the hope that sometimes kills you." That is an entirely accurate statement. Most members of the defence community, including me, woke up this morning and said this was going to be a good day for the Defence Forces and that, finally, we would be adequately resourced. There was good reason to expect the Defence Forces to be adequately resourced. There is a war in Ukraine, and we do not know what trajectory that might take. We have had Russian ships in our coastal waters only last year. A war just started in the Middle East 96 hours ago, and we have 500 troops out there. We have no means to get to them or to get there. We have no idea what trajectory that conflict is on.

We have a war on drugs. We have no means of monitoring our airspace - no primary radar. People can fly anything they want into our airspace with the transponder off and we cannot even detect it. During the assault on the MV Matthewoff the Cork coast a couple weeks ago, the Defence Forces had one helicopter available and only one ship. Unfortunately, unless drastic action is taken, I suspect we will not be able to conduct a similar operation even of that meagre resourcing standard in 12 months' time if the problem with retention of staff continues. There was good reason to be hopeful, but what we were hoping for has not come to pass in any shape or form.

At a press conference in Finland this afternoon it was announced that someone has deliberately damaged the Baltic connector, the gas pipeline connecting Finland to Estonia, and it is suspected that it was the Russians. We know this country is no gas storage facility whatsoever. We are the only EU country with no gas-storage facility. We've about 48 hours supply of gas in our pipes and we only have three pipelines bringing gas into this country, two from Scotland and one from the Corrib. We are very vulnerable. We need assets and a maritime presence to protect them, but there seems to be no action whatsoever in this budget.

The only standout measure for me in the budget is the increase of €15 million for defence pensions. I can say for sure that this will be nowhere near enough. This budget has landed very poorly. It has gone down like a lead balloon. If it had landed well, I would have said so. I was hoping it was going to be good, as most people were, but it certainly is not. These views are sincerely held. There is absolutely no retention measure in the budget. Even the sea-going naval personnel tax credit that the Minister for Finance announced is exactly €1,500. That is the same amount as last year. There is not even a remote attempt to try to get some of our ships back to sea even though three quarters of the vessels in our fleet are tied up.

There is supposed to be €1.5 billion in defence funding up to 2028.

In defence of the Minister, Deputy Coveney, he actually mentioned a €2 billion figure which, factoring in inflation, the figure for the defence budget should be €2 billion by 2028 but we are currently at only €1.23 billion. All we are asking the Government to do is to implement its own report, just as Deputy Verona Murphy was saying. This is not a new idea. It has been already agreed, approved and published.

The Defence community learned two lessons today. There is no point in engaging with processes such as commissions of the Defence Forces, strategic documentation or focus groups. They are a waste of time. All they delivered was heartache and false hope. Even as a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, I find it hard to invite RACO or PDFORRA before the committee. They question whether it will be of any use, whether there will be any output or any product at the end. I even wonder about my own position on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence. Does it have any affect whatsoever? We are airing all these views which are not then appropriately dealt with. The second lesson is that the gardaí did very well today and fair play to them. They deserve it. However, the reason they did well is they had a vote of no confidence in their Commissioner, they did not show up for voluntary overtime, they have access to the Workplace Relations Commission and they threatened strike action. They did well. However, the Defence Forces can do none of those things. They are highly loyal, obedient and professional and they get very little as a result. That is the big takeaway I have.

In summary, I sometimes feel like David McWilliams. Throughout the Celtic tiger years he consistently pointed out the risk that was accumulating from a financial point of view, but nobody listened to him. He told us there would be a crash, a day of reckoning, and there was. For the past four years here I have been saying that we are accumulating a massive amount of risk with no mitigating factors against it. Risk management is a basic function of any entity or organisation, any factory, business or company, and it is certainly a major factor for a country also, or at least it should be.

I started on a theme of hope and I will finish on a theme of hope. My sincerely held view is that the only hope for the Defence community now is the hope of a new Government at the back end of next year, properly constructed with a proper programme for Government that can adequately resource the Defence Forces and take on the longstanding structural and human difficulties that have been there for decades.

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