Gabrielle McFadden (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

According to the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers, RACO, there is a manning level crisis in the Defence Forces. It is not only RACO that is saying this but it also is being said by many ordinary honest-to-God personnel who I meet on a regular basis. This does not just affect officers but all personnel within the Defence Forces. The current trend of early voluntary retirements is not sustainable. The rate of members leaving will not be alleviated solely by the current reasonably high levels of recruitment. A major contributor to this situation was the very flawed re-organisation of the Army, and the loss of one brigade from the structure, with the consequential reduction of officers and personnel. This has left us with inadequate manning levels. That has huge implications and not just in respect of the troops who, for argument's sake, are required to travel from regional barracks to Dublin to perform duty.The Department of Defence should address these reorganisation issues and pay and conditions rather than leaving it to the Public Service Pay Commission, as it is doing. I have spoken on this many times, as have Senators Craughwell and Wilson. We should invite the Minister of State to the House for a debate on this. It should not be a debate where he gives us a list of positive things about the Army which we all know. We all know about the occasions such as the storms during the year where the Army comes in to help, the wonderful work that it does in the United Nations peacekeeping and on Operation Sophia. We all know all of these things and we do not want a speech about how wonderful the Army is. We want a proper debate on what the Department of Defence should be doing to look after our Defence Forces.