Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I endorse what Senator Chambers said about women's menstrual health. I want to raise another issue on which she may agree with me. The state of the Defence Forces in Ireland has been run down deliberately and systematically by Government after Government to the point where they are no longer fit for purpose. The Reserve Defence Forces, formerly Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil, FCÁ, has effectively been contracted to nothing. It is a shadow of its former self, just as the Garda Reserve was simply binned because it was inconvenient. The Defence Forces are now reduced to between 8,000 and 9,000 personnel across three services. We have ships out of commission because there are no crews to man them. It is a laugh to think that we are worried about the Russians when we cannot even put our small Naval Service out to sea in any circumstance in its entirety at the moment. This is a scandal.

Yesterday the Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, the leader of the Green Party, announced that Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines is to be bulldozed, as the newspaper said, to make way for social and affordable housing. I do not want to comment on whether that is a good or bad idea because I have not yet seen the proposal, and I welcome social and affordable housing close to the city in Dublin 6, where it is badly needed; but the proposal means the Defence Forces in Dublin, where 1.2 million people live, will now have one facility only, that is, McKee Barracks. That is the last barracks they are to have. It is an antiquated, Victorian or Edwardian structure used for the equitation school and other purposes. It also means the only facility next to or near Dublin will be the Curragh. The Defence Forces are shrinking under our very noses. If we are to remain outside NATO — I believe we should — we have a responsibility to give to the Government of Ireland, for the time being, what the Defence Forces have always been: the ultimate means to exert executive, governmental and democratic authority against any internal threat, terrorist event or external threat, within its capacity.

The process of shrinking the Defence Forces has gone beyond what is acceptable, as has the shrinking of the Reserve Defence Force role. It is the same as with the Garda Reserve. This is laziness. I am not making a personal point in saying that if we are to vest in one person the power to run the Defence Forces and the Department of Foreign Affairs, we should realise that the Defence Forces do not have any real voice at Cabinet. The time has come for that to be reversed. The reason I say all this is because I want a debate on the subject in this House.