Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South-Central, Sinn Fein)

The Naval Service is of particular importance to us as an island nation. It is essential. We talked about the full radar picture earlier. It is crucial that we have the capacity. It is unacceptable that we have had a situation over the past year and a half that ships have been put to sea without a functioning main gun because of inadequate personnel. I raised the issue of artificers earlier, and marine engineering officer teams are operating at roughly half strength. This is resulting in increased workload, added responsibilities and declining morale. This potentially runs the risk of some of those personnel, even adding further to the problem, by departing from the Defence Forces. In some of those critical specialist areas, the numbers remain critically low. This remain the case and has real operational implications and personnel implications. Along with the full radar picture, it is perhaps the most pressing need from a national security point of view to ensure that our naval capacity is brought back to something resembling an acceptable level.

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