Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator McFadden who lives in the heartland of the Defence Forces and who works with them on a constant basis. The Minister constantly tells us that the White Paper is the pathway forward for the Defence Forces. If one reads it, however, there is not one word in the White Paper about retention. We have no plan for keeping the expertise that we have spent millions training. They are climbing over one another to get out. The recruitment campaign has been excellent in getting people to express an interest in the Defence Forces, but of the 3,000 who did so, 380 were called, 180 turned up and some of those left before their training had concluded. Let us get real about the Defence Forces. I agree with Senator McFadden. We need to stop the talk and bring the Minister in here and get him to explain how he will reverse what is happening. It is disgusting that we are out in New York with U2 trying to get a seat on the UN when our Defence Forces, the very people we send out for peacekeeping, are falling apart.

Senator Leyden mentioned Brexit. He and I have worked quite hard on this area. The bottom line is that we have no plan. This will go wrong and we know that. I wrote a piece about it the day after the referendum. There is no plan. There is no military barracks between Dundalk and Finner Camp. There are no police stations most of the way along the Border. There is no longer corporate knowledge of managing a customs post on the Border because we never expected to have one.

My prediction is that the Brits will not seek to impose a Border in Northern Ireland but they will be quite happy to send 100 40 ft trucks daily from Scotland to Belfast to drive down to Rosslare to go to Europe so that we will have to close the Border on behalf of the European Union. Senator McFadden has just explained the problems with the Defence Forces. We have no way of closing the Border and we do not even know how to go about it. There is no electronic solution. I have no confidence in how we are going about this.

This weekend is a very important one in Ireland. On Saturday we will celebrate and remember those Irish people who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars. On Sunday we will remember all service personnel from Ireland who died in wars or on peacekeeping duties throughout the world. I ask that we step back and think about it. For the best part of a century, we turned our eyes away from those brave men and women who went to war in 1914 to 1918. Today, it is quite respectable to have a couple of First World War medals. We are all searching around in our drawers to dust off the medals of our grandparents and great grandparents. Let us give them some thought over the weekend. Anyone who has ever been out to the Somme or any of the other grave areas in France will know that it is heartbreaking.