John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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71. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence the current status of the report from the commission on the future of the Defence Forces; when there will be a full Government response on the report; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34179/22]

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I ask the Minister to provide details on the current status of the report from the Commission on the Defence Forces. When does he believe there will be a full Government response to the report? We have read over the last number of weeks and indeed months that there will be a proposal brought to the Cabinet. It is important there is a full debate in this House on the report and scrutiny of it and the Government's response to it at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence before the summer recess to give us time before the budgetary cycle starts. That is coming at us very quickly.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Commission on the Defence Forces was established on foot of a commitment in the programme for Government. As Minister for Defence, I welcomed the publication of the report of the commission on 9 February last.  The commission has undertaken a significant body of work that encompassed wide-ranging terms of reference.  The report contains 69 main recommendations with a large number of sub-recommendations totalling 130 individual recommendations.  It recommends significant changes for the Defence Forces and defence provision more generally in Ireland. It 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 has been undertaken over the past four months by my Department and the Defence Forces.  This has involved significant interdepartmental consultation and I and my officials have engaged with key stakeholders, including the representative associations, to ascertain their views. Following this engagement, I intend to return to the Government with a proposed response to the commission’s recommendations and a high-level action plan before the summer recess.

Providing for the defence of the State is a fundamental role of any Government and I firmly believe this is an opportunity to have a mature debate around the type of defence provision that we require and I will very much welcome deliberation, debate and discussion around that.

I am on record in this House as saying I hoped to bring this report to the Government in the month of June. We are running out of time to deliver on that, so this is now going to be brought to the Government in early July. My focus is more about getting the content right and getting Government agreement than it is about whether it is a week before or after a deadline was set. However, I assure the Deputy this will be done in the next couple of weeks. I hope it will be done next week but if not it will be done shortly after that. We are ready to bring recommendations to Government but are still consulting a number of other Ministers to finalise some of the detail.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister. It is unfortunate there are delays. I appreciate the Minister wants to get it right but there also needs to be full debate and scrutiny of what is being proposed by Government to ensure there is proper oversight from the joint committee, which has also been committed to. That needs to happen this side of the summer recess. I am pressing the Minister to ensure that happens and that there is a commitment that will happen this side of the recess, because the reality here is the longer the Minister dithers about a response and action to stem the haemorrhaging of personnel from Defence Forces, which are on their knees, the worse the situation gets. We see it this evening with a report on thejournal.ieon our Naval Service. A secret report commissioned last year highlighted to the Minister again that there were serious challenges with staffing levels and manning levels within the service and that it would be reduced to just three operational ships due to the failure to either recruit or retain key technical staff. The longer the Minister dithers, the more serious the crisis with our Defence Forces becomes.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Nobody is dithering and neither is anybody denying we have had significant recruitment and retention pressures in the Naval Service for many months now. We have discussed this both publicly and privately many times so let us get back to the real issue here, which is delivering a comprehensive Government decision on the back of a really good commission report that gives us an evidence base to act on. We also need to recognise we are acting in the context of a different international security environment now because of Russia's aggression in Ukraine and all that leads to. It is in that context we are trying to get this right. This is about setting a course for the Defence Forces for the next decade, not the next few months. My job is to get this right and then obviously be fully accountable to this House and the committees in taking questions around the implementation plan we will be looking to get approved by the Government. Of course I am going to be available to do that; I am looking forward to it. I hope I will get the support of this House because this is not something that should be party political. This is something that is core for the next decade in terms of the provision of security and defence infrastructure and is going to run through consecutive governments. As such, I will be very open about the basis of all the decisions we make and look forward to that process once we get a Government decision.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister. He will have all-party support, I hope, once the bases are covered. Those bases are the retention, remuneration and conditions of members of our Defence Forces.

That needs to be at the core of anything that comes before us. I refer to the possibility of there being contention. Unfortunately, we have seen the debate segue from discussion on what the Defence Forces will look like in future. The whole issue of neutrality is starting to seep into the conversation. I do not want the situation in Ukraine to be used by some to abandon our position of military neutrality, in which regard we have a proud tradition. If the debate and conversation moves into that space, the Minister will receive serious opposition from those of us on this side of the House. This is about putting in place a Defence Forces of which we can be proud, one that will be able to honour its mandate in terms of our UN role across the world. It is about ensuring we will have the capacity to build on to ensure our footprint and the soft power we have is expanded.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I remind Members that other Members are hoping their questions further down the running order will be reached. I ask Members to stick to the timeframes.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I assure the House that nobody is seeking to use the war in Ukraine to do anything apart from to have an honest conversation in respect of what our security needs are, how we respond to them and how, as a member of the European Union and a contributing state on this Continent, we can contribute to peace and security on the Continent of Europe. That is a perfectly valid debate to have. Ireland's neutrality, which is defined as non-alignment in terms of a defence pact, is one thing but Ireland is not neutral on the war in Ukraine. We have not been neutral on it since the start. We have contributed €44 million to Ukraine to support the Ukrainian military to defend itself and its people from the kind of horrors we saw yesterday, which was state-sponsored terrorism involving the targeting of a shopping mall with cruise missiles. We are not neutral on that. What we are focusing on in terms of the report of the commission, however, is not Ireland's traditional stance of military neutrality; it is about capacity issues for the Defence Forces to be able to do the job that we ask of them. It is about ensuring there are sufficient numbers in the Defence Forces and they are well equipped and resourced to do the increasingly complex job we ask of them.