Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank him for taking the time to meet the women of honour today.

I will place on record the concerns my former colleagues in the Defences Forces have. The nature of the complaints being brought forward by the women of honour, brave women that they are, and the things they talk about tend to happen behind closed doors and in secret. The few perpetrators who are involved in this horrendous activity have brought the entire Defence Forces organisation into disrepute. The independent inquiry the Minister is setting up will, I hope, get to the bottom of this issue and kill the culture that exists among those who perpetrate this activity.

I cannot speak on defence without speaking about the over-50s contract that needs urgent attention, the Army Ranger Wing and the technical pay issues that are outstanding. It was interesting to hear my colleague from Fine Gael speaking about the re-establishment of the third brigade. The Minister and I discussed the matter in the past and I wish Senator Carrigy well as he drives it home. With regard to Columb Barracks in Mullingar, the local community is looking to have a wonderful resource at that location. The Minister might engage with it that.

We are here not to discuss those issues but the Defence (Amendment) Bill 2021. I very much welcome the legislation and note the work of my colleague, Deputy Cathal Berry, in driving it forward with the Minister. I congratulate the Minister on the foresight in seeing the benefits the Reserve Defence Force can bring to deployments overseas. It is a truly historic day for the loyal members of the Reserve Defence Force who, for decades, have wanted to play a part in Ireland's peacekeeping role and other overseas missions. That day is finally here and it is a defining moment for the Reserve Defence Force. As a former training sergeant of the 5th Field Medical Corps in Galway, which in those days was an FCA unit, I know my former colleagues would be delighted at this legislation coming forward.

In recent research on the lived experience of Defence Forces personnel, Nicolas Canavan, a master of arts student in Galway, found that overseas deployments constituted one of the main highlights of the military careers of all participants. Respondents said these experiences afforded personal, new and unique viewpoints on life, unlike what any other profession could provide. The Minister has met members of the Defence Forces overseas and takes any opportunity he gets to engage with them. We would like that to be more often but his foreign affairs role takes up a lot of his time. I know, however, that he understands the benefits of overseas service to serving personnel.

The passing of this legislation can be nothing more than an exercise unless it is commenced. When does the Minister propose to commence the legislation? Will we see members of the Reserve Defence Force overseas in 2022? This is an important issue for them.

In welcoming this legislation, I must emphasise that the focus of the Government must remain on retaining and supporting programmes for Permanent Defence Force members to facilitate overseas deployments. The role of reservists must be in niche specialist areas, such as the cyber and medical areas. The experience young surgeons would get overseas treating injuries from the horrific accidents that take place would be invaluable to them. The Defence Forces are experiencing shortages due to an inability to retain suitably qualified and experienced personnel. There must be no impact on the Permanent Defence Force's training or future training systems to professionalise its members and bring them up to speed, commensurate with the expertise that we will be bringing in from the Reserve Defence Force from time to time.

If the Minister is serious about deploying our professional RDF personnel overseas, they must be adequately trained and equipped for overseas service and they and their families must be supported when they go overseas. Commencing this legislation without adequate employment protection legislation means that it simply will not work. A useful place to start might be with the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, who could deal with public servants and people working for the State who volunteer to go oversees. The Minister could guarantee the employment of Reserve Defence Force volunteers who go oversees, that it would not impact their career trajectory, and not impact their pension rights and things like that. We could start there as a pilot project before we start to bring in the private sector. Enabling the legislation immediately will provide the Permanent Defence Force with the ability to alleviate the burden on Permanent Defence Force members who are currently experiencing a high frequency of mandatory selection for overseas service at short notice, which is having a detrimental impact on their morale and family life. This legislation would be an ideal opportunity to augment that.

We all know that the Reserve Defence Force is 60% below strength but this legislation has the potential to reverse the decline of the force, which the Minister mentioned in his speech. I honestly believe that this is a defining moment for the Reserve Defence Force. I can only encourage it, in legislation, and those who are listening to this legislation, who have not joined the Reserve Defence Forces, to join it.

The Minister has mentioned two areas that I feel obliged to mention today, one of which was minors. It is no secret that I joined the FCA when I was 13 years of age and joined the Army when I was 16 and a half years old. For me, it was a positive experience the whole way. I ask the Minister to look over the water and see the boy soldier and girl soldier academies that exist in the United Kingdom. There is a tremendous advantage in bringing young people through a military discipline at a very young age and it feeds into the defence forces at large. People will probably be aghast at me saying that but such a system works extremely well in the UK and it works in other countries around the world. Having such a system here is something that the Minister might look into.

On the issue of Covid-19, I want to express my pride in the Defence Forces in the work they did. People have talked about one particular profession doing more than another particular profession in the area of Covid-19, and how nurses and doctors were front-line workers so they should get this, that or the other. It is my view that it should be everybody. I refer to truck drivers, soldiers, doctors, nurses and everybody who put their shoulder to the wheel. If there is something to be done by way of a public holiday or a bonus then everybody should get it and not just the ones who were in hospitals. They were well protected with personal protective equipment, PPE, whereas bus drivers had to face the public wearing nothing but their suit or ordinary clothes. Truck drivers had to collect goods not knowing from whom they were collecting. We should hold everybody in equal esteem and nobody did any better than anybody else.

I will finish by saying that the Government did a fantastic job over the last two years. The acting Government that we had in place after the election did phenomenal work and the Government itself did really great work during this Covid-19 crisis. I love to have a go at the Government any chance I get but sometimes one has to be honest and congratulate it on the work it did.