Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I rise to ask the Leader to facilitate a debate on the issue raised by my learned colleague, Senator Wall, namely, the recent report on the Defence Forces. It is sad to realise that the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, the Minister and the conclusions of the White Paper all basically acknowledge the serious shortcoming in the Defence Forces. Numbers are declining. The Chief of Staff mentioned this morning that some Naval Service vessels have put to sea without a full complement of men or women. There are declining numbers. The pay situation is poor and there are poor job and promotion opportunities. Morale is very low. We are supposed to have a Naval Service and an Army that might protect our State and coastline but, regrettably, we rank last in the world compared with countries of a similar size and population. That is very sad. Yesterday, I spoke on the issue of penalty points for fishermen and masters of seagoing vessels in the context of fishing infringements, yet not alone is the Naval Service, which is already very compact and relatively small by international standards, obliged to police Irish boats, of which there are many - some of the fishermen say they are over-policed - but there are significant numbers of fishing vessels from Spain, France and Germany coming into Irish waters.There is no way whatsoever that our relatively small naval fleet can do that work. This matter was raised in a more professional and knowledgeable way by Senator Wall. I want to concur with his remarks. If something is not done shortly about our Defence Forces and Naval Service, morale will suffer and the numbers involved will get smaller and smaller. A significant amount of money will have to be put into this, but I appreciate that the Minister has put his hands up and agreed that what the report says is correct and true. Changes must be made sooner rather than later.