Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome this opportunity to engage with Members of Seanad Éireann on matters relating to the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. I look forward to hearing the contributions of Senators.

The establishment of the Commission on the Defence Forces was set out in the programme for Government and was a key priority for me, as the Minister for Defence. When the commission’s report was published in February, it contained recommendations on widespread and unprecedented changes for the Defence Forces and defence provision more generally in Ireland. The report contains 130 recommendations in total. These range from reform of the high-level command and control structures to revitalisation of the Reserve Defence Force. However, the overarching theme is the urgent need for cultural transformation within the Defence Forces, as well as recognising capability shortfalls that need to be responded to.At the time of the report's publication, I made a commitment to revert to the Government with a memo detailing a proposed response to the commission's recommendations and a high-level action plan. Since then, I, my officials and the Defence Forces progressed a significant body of work, culminating in the approval of the memo and high-level action plan on 12 July this year. The Government approved a move over a six-year period to a level of capability for the Defence Forces equivalent to what the report called "Level of Ambition Two", or LOA2, as set out in the capability framework devised by the commission. This will entail funding increases to reach a defence budget of approximately €1.5 billion, in January 2022 prices, by 2028 through the annual Estimates process.

I will take a second to explain what that means. I insisted in advance of that Government decision that we would take a point in time and defence equipment pricing at that point, so that we would have to take into account inflation and increases in the cost of equipment for the Defence Forces over the next six years. What we have committed to by 2028 is not €1.5 billion of expenditure on defence, but rather it will be much closer to €2 billion. The €1.5 billion of value will be attached to January 2022 prices, before the war in Ukraine started and before the commission reported, when we had a relatively normal defence procurement market. We need to deliver the equivalent of €1.5 billion in January 2022 prices by 2028. I suspect that means it will be €1.8 billion, €1.9 billion or €2 billion, depending on whether military equipment inflation is at 4%, 6% or 8%. It is important to make that point because many people have quoted the €1.5 billion as if we have to be at €1.5 billion by 2028. In reality, we will probably be significantly beyond that in order to fulfil this commitment to that figure in January 2022 prices. This represents the largest funding increase for defence in the history of the State.

I would like to talk about the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces, the subsequent Government response, and the significant progress that has been made since publication in a short few months. As Senators will all know, in December 2020, the Government authorised the establishment of the commission and agreed its terms of reference and membership. The terms of reference covered the following: the structures and size of the Defence Forces; defence capabilities; HR policies and strategies; the Reserve Defence Force; governance; high-level command and control in the Defence Forces; and pay structures. The work of the commission was carried out against the backdrop of the defence policy framework set out in the White Paper on Defence 2015 and the White Paper on Defence: Update 2019, both of which were developed by joint civil and military teams.

The publication of the commission's report last February represented the culmination of 13 months of intensive and dedicated work carried out by the commission members. The report was wide-ranging, challenging and comprehensive and proposed significant changes for the Defence Forces and defence provision in Ireland. The illegal invasion of Ukraine within weeks of the publication of the report acted as a catalyst that brought defence matters to the fore of public discourse. With the deterioration of the international security environment, nations across the world have been reassessing their defence capabilities, and Ireland is no exception. The commission's finding that Ireland's Defence Forces would be unable to conduct a meaningful defence of the State against a sustained act of aggression by a military force with its current capability brought the need for investment and transformation into sharp focus.

The report made a wide range of recommendations regarding high-level command arrangements, Defence Forces structures, defence capabilities, the Reserve Defence Force and funding, with a significant proportion of the recommendations focused on strategic HR and, vitally, fundamental cultural change in the Defence Forces. The commission identified the urgent need for clarification of the levels of ambition for the Defence Forces and, in the absence of such clarity, it created a framework that was focused around three levels of ambition, LOAs. The first of which, LOA1, represents Ireland's current capability - in other words, what we would need to do by 2028 in order to simply maintain current capabilities. LOA2 then represented enhanced capability. LOA3 represented funding that is on a par with similar countries across Europe. One of the key recommendations of the commission was that consideration would be given to a move to LOA2 in the short term. The commission also recognised that any proposal to move to LOA3 could only be considered the context of a step up to LOA2 in the first instance. In other words, we cannot jump straight to LOA3; we simply do not have the infrastructure or the foundation to do that. We need to build that foundation. Then, a future Government can make a decision by 2028, or in advance of that, on whether it wants to go beyond LOA2 in terms of capabilities.

As the Minister for Defence, I believe we should be planning to go considerably beyond level of ambition 2. However, we have to put the building blocks in place first. We have to get the people in place, which is the most important issue. Spending money on equipment and on procurement is doable, but we need the skill sets and the numbers in order to ensure the Defence Forces reach level of ambition 2 in the context of what is set out in the commission report. This will then open up the opportunity for Government to go beyond that in terms of more capability beyond level of ambition 2, should we choose to do it, which I think we should. However, we have a lot of work to do in the meantime.

Due to the large number and a wide-ranging nature of the recommendations, many of them were highly complex. A period of five months was required to give the recommendations detailed consideration and to develop a high-level action plan, which I know some Members of the Seanad will have seen and read. Following the publication of the report, I engaged extensively with ministerial colleagues and other stakeholders, including representatives’ associations. In fact, we went on a tour of barracks - I think we were in virtually every barracks in the country - in order to listen to current Defence Forces' personnel in terms of their concerns and their ambitions for the Defence Forces and how we might respond to them.

A civil military team was also established to work on the response to the recommendations of the high-level action plan. This involved extensive engagement across the defence organisation, as well as a wide range of other stakeholders and Departments. This included the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, as Members would expect, given the fact that it has to provide the resources that are needed.

Following detailed analysis of the recommendations and extensive engagement with stakeholders, the high-level action plan set out a position of "accept", "accept in principle", "further evaluation" or "revert" for each of the 130 recommendations. I am pleased to say that 103 of the 130 recommendations were either accepted or were accepted in principle, with 17 recommendations being subject to further evaluation. I will revert to Government with proposed responses to the remaining ten recommendations at a later stage.

Let me just explain what that is about because there is really no recommendation in the report with which I do not agree, or, at least, I cannot think of one off-hand. However, there are some that we cannot simply accept without knowing how we are going to do it, or whether or not there is a legal base to do it. For example, we want to make our Chief of Staff a chief of defence, or a CHOD, as the position is known internationally. We want to set up a defence headquarters around that new CHOD position. We are getting advice from the Office of the Attorney General about the legalities around that and how it impacts on the Defence Acts. The relationship between the command-and-control structures within the Defence Forces and the Department will change quite fundamentally as a result of that new infrastructure and those new positions. By the end of this month, I will have a clearer understanding of the Attorney General's legal consideration around how we would do that and what we would need to do from a legislative point of view to facilitate it. However, we absolutely agree with it, and we are going to make it happen. That is just an example of one of the ten recommendations on which we need to revert to Government.

I ask the Acting Chairperson to let me just finish as I have one other page left. The commission’s report identified five core areas to be addressed in an implementation plan, which were captured in the high-level action plan as five strategic objectives. These are: strategic HR and cultural change to be delivered; new command-and-control and joint structures to be established; services to be reformed and restructured; Reserve Defence Forces, RDF, to be revitalised; and joint capability development to be implemented. The high-level action plan set out initial implementation and oversight structures, including a high-level steering board chaired by the Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach, an implementation oversight group, which will be chaired by an independent chair and the establishment a civil-military implementation management office. All of those structures are now up and running and are moving forward. We do not yet have an independent chair, but I hope to be able to finalise that in the next number of weeks. We are trying to get the right person. Believe it or not, it is not easy to get the right people for these jobs at the moment.

The high-level action plan also identified 38 early actions to immediately progress a number of key recommendations from the commission’s report. This will also provide the necessary building blocks to develop an implementation plan within six months of the Government decision. A number of key appointments were proposed in the high-level action plan in order to progress the implementation of the recommendations and the transformation agenda, including a civilian head of transformation, a civilian head of strategic HR and a gender adviser who will all report directly to the Chief of Staff. A digital transformation officer will also be required to lead the digital transformation agenda and will report directly to the head of transformation.

We are very much in implementation mode now, and I am happy to listen to Senators' comments and to take questions from them. I will try to come back in at the end to answer any of the specific questions they might have. We only got a Government decision on this in the middle of July. When you take August, we have really only had two months of work since this report was done. An extraordinary amount has happened in that time. I have never seen co-operation or the level of partnership between the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces like we are seeing at the moment, and this is good.

The budget that has just been passed gets us off to a pretty strong start from a financial perspective. To spend approximately €114 million or €115 million more in the area of defence next year than was spent in this year is a significant step forward. It is probably the biggest increase that can I remember, or maybe that has ever happened in the Defence Forces in any one year. We are, therefore, starting as I hope we mean to continue, but there is an enormous amount of work to do to build a Defence Forces consistent with what the commission has demanded of us over the next five to six years. I look forward to coming back to this House on a regular basis to give it updates.