Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I can send the details about this. The pay is so low that soldiers are coming back from United Nations peacekeeping missions and having to claim the working family payment. That is a damning indictment on the Government.

Pay and conditions within the Defence Forces have been something my Sinn Féin colleagues and I have raised regularly and they need to improve. This is how you strengthen our Defence Forces. You pay the men and women properly. This will also help with recruitment and with retention. Nearly four years after the Government took office, the recruitment and retention crisis continues unabated. More people have left than have joined every year since the Government took office, with numbers of just over 7,500 members against a target of 11,500. This is a failure.

Our peacekeeping efforts are something to be proud of as well. Regrettably, the Government withdrew from the UNDOF mission to the Golan Heights, in which Ireland had participated for more than a decade and that saw more than 2,700 Defence Force personnel deployed, at the time when the mission is more crucial than ever. The Tánaiste deprioritised a non-mandated peacekeeping mission in favour of an EU battle group that cannot even secure the adequate complement of volunteers in which to take part. Even the rank and file have abandoned this plan.

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