Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise a number of issues on our Defence Forces with the Leader. The first issue is to support calls made in this House by colleagues for getting an update on the commencement of public pay talks. There may have been some preliminary contact with the representative bodies of our Defence Forces, which is always welcome, but I am sure that those representative bodies, like the rest of us in the House, would welcome clarification of the reports in the media of preliminary talks, and referred to in the media as exploratory talks, before the invites were sent out to representative bodies yesterday. From dealing with those representative bodies in the past months I know that they are very keen to be at the table to represent their members but they want to ensure that they are all starting from the same starting blocks with the Department.

I want to use this opportunity to reaffirm the Labour Party's support for the Permanent Defence Force Other Ranks Representative Association, PDFORRA's desire, and now the growing need, to affiliate to ICTU. It is events like those over the past days that should finally convince the Minister, Deputy Coveney, that this affiliation should happen.

In replies received by my Labour Party colleagues over recent days we learned that up to 500 Defence Forces personnel will leave our Permanent Defence Force by the end of the year. If we do not address pay and conditions urgently then we are simply not being serious about the future of our Defence Forces and no forthcoming commission will solve this.

With regard to the forthcoming commission I too believe it is very important that the House gets the chance to discuss the terms of reference for the commission. I am sure that like many Members who made a submission to the Department of Defence, we would all like to know how the commission is progressing, what terms of reference are being considered, and indeed the timelines involved.

I have been contacted by a number of members of the public who are very complimentary of our Defence Forces and the work they are carrying out during Covid-19, especially over the past days, and they wanted that acknowledged in the House.

I welcome the meeting this week between the Minister and representatives of the Reserve Defence Force. It was reported that the Department has also agreed that members of the RDF will be able to serve overseas in the future. This is a welcome development, but it needs the support of employment legislation, which I hope will be forthcoming. Our Reserve Defence Force has an important part to play in the future of our Defence Forces, and this meeting was an important step in that development.

I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Defence, Deputy Coveney, to the House to urgently address these issues.