Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)
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168. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence for an update as of July 2025 on the digitalisation of the Military Service Pensions Collection; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38366/25]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Military Service Pensions Collection (MSPC) involves cataloguing and partially digitising approximately 275,000 files dealing with the service of qualifying members of the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, the Hibernian Rifles, Cumann na mBan, Na Fianna Éireann, the Irish Republican Army and records of the Department from the period April 1916 to the 30th of September 1923.

The decision to afford public access to the MSPC was announced in 2006 by the then Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, TD, in the context of the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. The MSPC project was established in 2008.

To date, the Project team have processed and databased all files relating to the 1916 veterans, the casualties of the War of Independence and the casualties from both sides of the Civil War.

Work on the project has also included the development of a website for the public release of material from the MSPC through the Military Archives (MA) website. There have been 18 releases of information from the Collection to date, the latest in June 2025.

The Project currently stands at approximately 161,000 files catalogued and approximately 95,000 scanned to date. The Project has now digitised and made available some 2.7 million pages of archival material online. In addition, there have been three publications during the lifetime of this project:

• Guide to the Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection - Published in 2012
• The Brigade Activity Reports - Published in 2019
• A Very Hard Struggle – Lives in the MSPC – Published in 2023

Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)
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169. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence to provide data on new Defence Forces recruits figures for the years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38367/25]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The military authorities have provided the information requested by the Deputy which is summarised in the table below. Number of Permanent Defence Force Recruits 2020-2025:

Figures provided for 2024 and to date in 2025 indicate a stabilisation in the strength. There were 708 personnel inducted in 2024, the highest in over five years and the Defence Forces have advised that they are targeting a further 800 inductions at a minimum for 2025.

While it is positive that numbers are stabilising, I am determined to achieve greater progress in the recruitment and retention of personnel and, to enable this, a number of key measures have been implemented by government. The recruitment age has been increased to 39 years for those roles that had a recruitment age below that, and to 50 years for Direct Entry Specialists. The mandatory retirement age has been increased to 62. Private secondary healthcare has been rolled out to all personnel and the provisions of the Working Time Directive have been applied across the Defence Forces subject to certain exemptions. The Patrol Duty allowance payable to Naval Service personnel at sea has been doubled after ten days at sea in a calendar year and the Naval Service tax credit has been extended for a further five years. There has also been significant progress on pay in recent years.

Budget 2025 provided a record allocation of €1.35 billion for the Defence Sector, an increase of €100 million. In relation to specific recruitment targets, this allocation provides for the recruitment of at least a net additional 400 personnel per annum.

Whilst there are still undoubtedly challenges, significant progress has been made on a number of fronts and the allocation of record levels of expenditure to the Defence sector is illustrative of my intent in this regard.

Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)
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170. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence the number of retirements and resignations in the Defence Forces for the years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38368/25]