Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

Regarding the shadow fleet, I also remain concerned, as do European and international counterparts. As we continue to sanction Russia to get it to end its brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine, these sanctions need to capture the activities of the shadow fleet.

What I would say, and say to those outside this House too, without commenting on important national security issues, is that we are obviously plugged to a range of structures in terms of information exchange and working with others on monitoring situations. We have our ships at sea and our Air Corps. We made a decision, as the Deputies know, to join an information exchange system this year, which is really important for exchanging information with European counterparts on what they might see in their sea heading in our direction and vice versa. We will have a new national maritime security strategy published shortly and over 300 submissions have been made to that.

Recruitment is very much going the right way. Last year was the first year in quite a number of years we saw any stabilisation or increase in the membership of the Defence Forces. This year we will see a significant improvement on that. What I said to our Chief of Staff yesterday is that in and of itself it is not going to be enough. This is a view he and I share. We are going to have to look at what more can be done. We have established a major training centre that will have huge capacity by 2027, I think, in that it will be able to take in 1,000 recruits a year. We need to ensure all the pinch points are addressed.

Regarding Deputy Ó Laoghaire's point, the encouraging thing is there is huge interest now in joining the Defence Forces. Whether it is the Air Corps, the Naval Service or the Army, the number of people saying they want to join is going up and we need to make sure we have processes in place to speedily respond to that in a very competitive market for attracting people. I have outlined to the House a number of measures we have taken to try to make such a career more financially attractive. I accept there are issues with cadet pay. I addressed this at the RACO conference and I am committed to my Department engaging with the Department of public expenditure and representative bodies on that matter.

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