Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Government. It has at last sent out a signal to foreign direct investment in this country that we do not get defence and security and have no interest whatsoever in it. The miserable additional €55 million increase in defence spending will just about allow the Defence Forces to tread water. There is nothing in it for them. The Government simply does not get it and has not got it over the past ten years I have speaking about this. My colleague, Deputy Berry, has been speaking about it for the past four years.

We keep talking about recruitment. What about retention? What about holding on to the experts we have and paying them the money they are worth? We talk about increasing the number. A net increase of 400 military personnel was announced. We have to recruit a couple of thousand before we start to see a net increase. Military personnel are walking out the gate day after day. We talk about bringing in an additional 400 people. The Government should first recruit the 1,000 who left in recent times and then start talking about a net increase. When we bring these people in they will need instructors to train them. The bottom line on it is the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, as far as I know, has refused to pay the instructors allowance to officers. I just do not understand what that is about.

Representatives from the Defence Forces and the Department of Defence were before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence recently. One of the things we spoke about was the Naval Service. That is the Naval Service that is collapsing and has €300 million worth of ships tied up in Cork with nowhere to go because there is no crew. What is the problem? The problem is if a Revenue Commissioner or other Government official is put on a Naval Service ship to sail out overnight, they get an allowance of €167 for the night, while the sailor gets €60 before tax. The bottom line on it is we were told there would be an increase in patrol duty allowance, which would go some way towards retaining people in the navy. I see nothing in the budget to assure me that anything is coming that will bring that forward.

The next issue is the level of ambition 2 that we spoke about so much in the context of the Commission on the Defence Forces. It was going to be great. We were going to increase the money up to 2028. As I said, I do not see any increase. Inflation has probably taken the €55 million at this stage. It is unfair to ask the Minister of State this because he is not the Minister for Defence but, unfortunately, he is the Minister in the chair. Have we now abandoned level of ambition 2 and just decided that we will slowly unwind the Defence Forces? There was talk of an increased tax credit. I see nothing in the budget for that. As I said, there is nothing there in respect of patrol duty allowance and nothing there to retain sailors.

To make things look respectable, somehow or other the authors of the budget have managed to tie in a number for an unknown quantum that may or may not come into the Defence Forces budget as a result of public sector pay talks. I am a little confused as to why that is. I see absolutely nothing that will fund the implementation of the working time directive. What is happening is we are hoping we will talk down the clock on the working time directive and push it out to the next government to solve. It has been sitting on the table for years. It is time to put it right but unless there is funding to support it, it is going nowhere.

On the patrol duty allowance, the recent operation was multiagency, as the Minister of State knows. The Garda, Coast Guard, Naval Service and Revenue Commissioners were involved in it. All of the people involved in that massive drugs bust that we all speak so proudly about were paid the overnight subsistence allowance, except for the members of the Naval Service. In that particular situation, and I do not know whether the Minister of State has been watching international commentary, we are now quite a laughing stock. We sent three ships to capture a small yacht and we sent one ship to capture a massive ship. Something is terribly wrong in the way we are doing things.

As I listened to the Minister speak on the defence side of the budget, I heard him say some of the money allocated to the Defence Forces will be taken and used for the tribunal that is about to be put together as a result of the independent review group report. Furthermore, more of the money will be taken to try to implement some of the findings of the independent review group. Maybe that €55 million I talked about will not materialise at all at the end of the day.

We have to get our act together. I recently attended an intelligence and security forum conference in London. People are absolutely horrified that we are in such a poor state. We cannot defend our sky. We cannot see what is up there. We have been told primary radar will not be here until 2028 now. We have no idea what is going on in our waters. We depend on other people to tell us what is going on. When we do find something that needs to be dealt with, we only have one ship at a time to deal with it. We are talking about increasing equipment and infrastructure. Who will use it? What will we do with it? Will it be tied up with the other €300 million worth of ships in Cork? It is simply not on.

I look at how we can spend money in other Departments, for example, the Department of Transport's search and rescue contract recently allocated to Bristow. At a recent shareholders' meeting, Bristow hailed the fact that it was buying five AW189 helicopters, which are the ones the Air Corps was told were not suitable for Irish waters. Bristow is buying five of them for €135 million and guess who is paying for them? We are. At the end of their contract, like the Sikorsky S-92s, they will be flown out of this country and it will be a case of thank you very much for your time and money. That contract was worth €800 million. It can be imagined what €800 million would have done for the Defence Forces if they got their hands on it.

The bottom line is I am deeply concerned about the way money is thrown out. The Minister of State spoke about the additional money going out in foreign affairs. The time has come for a complete audit of the money we are putting into NGOs. Where is that money going? What is it funding? We need to do that.

I am delighted to see that the cyber side is coming along. I know the Minister of State has a specific interest in that.

On the issue of local government, we are the most centralised government in the world at this stage. What are we funding our county councils for? Please give them some powers.