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

There is quite a lot to respond to there. I had a closing speech but I will put it aside and try to answer people's questions. Every second speaker raised the issue of pay and allowances. Many of the people campaigning for the Defence Forces representative associations to have a relationship with ICTU in the context of the public sector pay discussions need to understand they cannot have it both ways. They cannot call for increased pay for the Defence Forces and at the same time want them to be part of collective bargaining in the context of pay discussions. It is either one or the other. We have now gone down the latter route because I was asked to do it and that was supported by the representative bodies. They wanted to have associate membership of ICTU. We have facilitated that and they were part of that process for the new pay deal. Where we can make interventions is in allowances. I will talk about that in a bit of detail in a second.

With regard to the budget, a number of people referred to €67 million. It is not €67 million. We will spend around €114 million on the defence budget next year. What we did not factor in on budget day with regard to the €67 million increase was that, if the new pay deal is accepted, that will mean about €47 million or so for the defence sector in pay and pensions. That is about €27 million in pay and €20 million on pensions. Adding those numbers together, assuming it is a "Yes" from trade unions on the pay deal, that is an extra €114 million, give or take €1 million on either side in extra expenditure on the broader defence sector next year, which is a very significant increase of more than 10% in one year. It is important to say that.

I take Senator McDowell's point about getting to where we need to be by 2028. I think that will be closer to €2 billion, given the pace of inflation at the moment and the demand for munitions and defence equipment because of what is happening in Ukraine and what many countries, particularly in Europe, have contributed to support Ukraine. There will be considerable pressure on supply chains for military equipment and procurement processes and so on, of which Ireland will have to take account.

Some people in this Chamber today have been calling on me to spend more money on defence through their own budget proposals. We are talking about spending a fraction of what we committed. The Sinn Féin budget has a total of €25 million extra, €10 million of which is capital. We are going to be spending in excess of €100 million more on defence next year. Let us be consistent and honest in what we are asking for versus what we are actually proposing in alternative budget proposals and so on. I accept that next year we will spend well in excess of €170 million on capital investment, which I think is the highest ever spent on defence. We will need to increase the capital investment significantly over the years ahead. The truth is that, with the capacity we have today in personnel, procurement systems and the number of engineers we have, we can only do so much next year. I hope we will be able to do more each year in the build-up to 2028 because we will have much stronger foundations in place to be able to do that.

Recruitment and retention is perhaps the biggest challenge of all. We have committed to supporting the recommendation of the commission, which is to increase by 2,000 the establishment of the Permanent Defence Force. That is building it up to around 11,500. We are currently more than 1,000 behind where we should be, with fewer than 8,500. We are talking about adding more than 3,000 people to the Permanent Defence Force over a six-year period when we are currently losing people in terms of net outcomes. That means an extraordinary turnaround in a relatively short space of time. We are also talking about adding close to 3,000 people to the Reserve in that period. For the defence family, both the Permanent Defence Force and the Reserve, the target is to add 6,000 people in six years. That is achievable tor the Reserve, given the interest expressed in joining the Reserve over the summer. I am interacting regularly with the RDFRA and the Reserve to listen to them on what we have to do. The problem with getting people into the Reserve at the moment is not the number of people who want to join. It is the capacity problems around facilitating the screening process and the medical exams that are required while the Permanent Defence Force, which needs to do some of that, is under significant pressure itself with recruitment, retention, training programmes and so on. We are going to have to outsource some of that. That has not been straightforward. We have tried to do it with medicals and it has not been as smooth as some people had hoped.I will make a very clear distinction between the appetite to join the Permanent Defence Forces and the Reserve, and the realities of facilitating turning that appetite into new members. There are a number of obstacles but the appetite to join the Reserve at the moment is very strong. My understanding is that over the summer well over 1,000 applied to join the Reserve. It is the capacity issues, which we have to fix, that are preventing an awful lot of those people becoming reservists in the weeks and months ahead. I can assure Senators we are on that.

On the new appointments we are moving early on, and I will talk about the 38 early actions in a second, the head of transformation, head of HR and the head of gender are all really important. We are for the first time going to effectively install civilians at a very senior level into the Defence Forces. They will report directly to the Chief of Staff in what, in time, will be a new defence headquarters with all the power and responsibilities that come with that. There is a big difference between being a Chief of Staff and being a chief of defence. We will have to change the Defence Acts and a whole range of other things to facilitate that.

We only made a Government decision in the middle of July and we are already significantly progressing a whole series of things only a couple of months later. I will have legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General on the chief of defence, or CHOD position, and the defence headquarters, and what that means in terms of having a legal basis to do that and so on. The relationship between the Defence Forces and the Department of Defence changes quite fundamentally with that change. That will require quite a lot of legal consideration, and is not just a policy decision.

I take the points Senator Clonan made about Brexit and political considerations on the island of Ireland, which I think need a lot of debate in this House. I would like to come back, as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, to facilitate that debate because sometimes we hear a lot of one perspective and perhaps we need to hear a broader perspective.

In the context of the Defence Forces, I take the Senator's point. It is quite difficult to plan for the unknown, so we propose that we stick with the commission's recommendation. We have got six years, effectively, to build quite significant capacity and put the foundation in place to do a lot more quite quickly after that, if we choose to do so. Certainly, if I am in government in the lead up to 2028, I expect I will recommend that we move well beyond the level of ambition 2 in terms of capacity. That is the only credible place for Ireland to be in internationally given what other countries are doing right now. We think we are investing a lot more in defence but Senators should see what other countries are doing in the context of what is happening in Ukraine. We are very fortunate in terms of where we are geographically on the planet. We have natural defences given the fact we are an island on the west coast of Europe and the UK, with the US on the other side of the Atlantic. We do not have a lot of natural threats. While, of course, there is a cyber threat and a whole series of other disruptive threats, we are not in the same category as many other countries in Europe in terms of their proximity to Russia and the war in Ukraine.

Senator Clonan has written a lot about the need for a cultural change. I wish to say on the record that I am absolutely committed to that. We will have a report from the judge-led process before the end of the year. I will take the recommendations of that process seriously whatever they may be in terms of how far-reaching they will be. The process is going well from what I know of it.