On behalf of the committee, I express my condolences to Senator Craughwell on the passing of his wife Helen. We really are sorry for his bereavement and he is in our thoughts and prayers.

The joint committee is meeting today to discuss the key priorities for Defence Forces representative associations. From the Permanent Defence Force Other Ranks Representative Association, PDFORRA, we are joined by Mr. Araon Kearney, president, and Mr. Gerard Guinan, general secretary. From the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers, RACO, we are joined by Lieutenant Colonel Martin Ryan, president, and Lieutenant Colonel Conor King, general secretary. From the Reserve Defence Force Representative Association, RDFRA, we are joined by Mr. Eugene Gargan, president, and Mr. Neil Richardson, general secretary. They are all very welcome here this morning.

I will first invite the representatives from PDFORRA to make their opening statement, followed by RACO and the RDFRA. The opening statements will be followed by questions from members of the committee. Each member has a seven-minute slot in which to ask questions and for the witnesses to respond.

I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where he or she is not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, a member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any member participating via MS Teams to formally confirm prior to making his or her contribution to the meeting that he or she is on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

Both members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory regarding an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I invite Mr. Guinan to make his opening statement. He will be followed by Lieutenant Colonel King on behalf of RACO and then Mr. Richardson on behalf of the RDFRA.

If I could deviate for one second, I express my deepest sympathy to the family of Ross Dunne, a sergeant in the Air Corps. He was a fine young gentleman who passed away this week. I express my sympathy to his father Peter, who is a serving member out in Baldonnel, his mother Sharon, his brother Jamie, and his partner Lorna. On behalf of all members of PDFORRA, we express our deepest sympathy to his family. It was a very tragic event this week.

The committee extends its condolences to his family as well. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend the meeting this morning. This is the third time that I have had the honour of addressing an Oireachtas committee on defence during my tenure as general secretary of PDFORRA.

PDFORRA represents in excess of 5,500 members of the Defence Forces. This number represents one of the highest levels of representation as a percentage of workforce of any public service union or staff association in the State. Our association was founded in 1990 following a significant period of turmoil surrounding pay and allowances, which forced many personnel to leave at that time.

Regrettably, recent times have seen the Defence Forces encounter further difficulties with pay and allowances, resulting in another exodus of fine young men and women who could not sustain life within the Defence Forces based on the rates of pay and allowances on offer. On those previous occasions that I have come before the defence committee, I can honestly say that our attendance here has, with its help, sparked some action to address issues that PDFORRA has raised, and I sincerely hope that today will be no different. Thankfully, over my tenure as general secretary, conditions have somewhat stabilised and improved for members on the ground. However, while some of the improvements in conditions have been universal and were badly needed, some cohorts within the Defence Forces have been overlooked with negative consequences. In the foregoing regard, I want to point to the technicians within the Air Corps as an indicative cohort in need of special attention, as some of these personnel have not received any uplift in technician pay. This is having a negative impact on their lives and on recruitment and retention.

In 2021, when I appeared before this committee, I stated:

Specialist technicians within the Air Corps are also in short supply, with significant shortfalls in personnel across a wide spectrum of specialties. This is feeding growing incidents of burnout and departure from this branch of the service.

The potential improvement in the economic situation, together with the lack of security of tenure and lack of movement in technician pay will no doubt hasten the departure of more men and women in the short to medium term.

As I outlined at that time, the immediate concern was the security of tenure issue, which thankfully has been resolved, with the post-1994 contract personnel now seeing their retirement age extended to 62 years of age. It would be easy to forget that, in 2021, personnel were facing a cliff edge of 50 to 55 years of age as a ceiling in service. However, as with all things industrial relations, IR, related, once you have solved one issue, you have to move on swiftly to the next. In the Defence Forces, there are a great number of unresolved issues due to a sticking plaster mentality having been used on matters previously, as there was no properly functioning IR system. Having stood before specialist technicians in the Air Corps twice in the past month and heard their concerns first hand, I have no doubt about the depth of frustration, anger and disillusionment among these highly skilled and experienced technicians and inspectors. Their expertise is highly sought after across aviation, the pharmaceutical sector and other technical industries where significantly better pay is readily available. They have a legitimate grievance that their skills and commitment have not been adequately recognised or rewarded. I understand and share that frustration. The Air Corps is competing for specialist skills in a market that knows their value and unless that reality is recognised, it will continue to lose them.

The consequences of failing to value and retain them are now starkly evident in the following numbers. The Air Corps has a combined establishment of 323 aircraft inspectors and aircraft technicians, yet only 55 of 101 aircraft inspector positions are filled and only 95 of 216 aircraft technician positions are filled. That leaves just 150 personnel against an establishment of 323 - less than half the required technical workforce. The comparison with 2019 is particularly stark. Aircraft inspector strength has fallen from 79% to 54%, while aircraft technician strength has fallen from 60% to 44%.

Having suitably qualified and experienced personnel to maintain and certify aircraft is essential to flight safety and operational capability. The current shortage of personnel responsible for maintaining, inspecting and releasing aircraft for flight is increasing the risk profile for flight safety and threatening operational capability. The shortage is already resulting in increased outsourcing. In 2025, ramp operations and line maintenance support for the flight training school reportedly cost €981,228, while line and base maintenance support in No. 3 Operations Wing cost approximately €1.344 million. That is more than €2.3 million per year across these two examples alone. The State is effectively paying twice for the same capability - first, to recruit, train and develop highly skilled personnel, and then again to purchase that expertise back from civilian contractors when it fails to retain them.

There is a significant long-term cost. Outsourcing maintenance deprives Air Corps technicians of the hands-on experience needed to develop, progress and sustain critical in-house experience. There is also a fundamental issue of sovereign capability. An air force cannot remain truly sovereign if it becomes increasingly dependent on foreign contractors to maintain, support and sustain its aircraft. This is not simply a pay issue, but a strategic vulnerability. In a national emergency, the State must be able to rely on its own trained personnel and assured capability, not on the continued availability, commercial priorities or willingness of external contractors. Once that sovereign capability is lost, rebuilding it can take years.

It is unrealistic to expect the Air Corps to maintain the current levels of operational output with the current maintenance staffing levels as witnessed with the recent grounding of the PC-12 fleet. The committee must, therefore, look at technician pay not simply as remuneration, but as an essential investment in retaining the specialist skills required to maintain aircraft safely and sustain the operational capability of the Irish Air Corps.

Over my tenure, I have been extremely frustrated on behalf of our members for the time taken to address outstanding matters. This is one of outstanding importance and must be addressed urgently. At one time, I had believed that delays in implementing IR solutions was only a PDFORRA issue, but my attendance at a number of IR events, particularly over the course of the last year, has only reinforced my understanding that the delays in addressing industrial relations matters are a central issue. While my interactions with the staff in the Department of public expenditure have generally been positive, with them showing themselves to be patriotic civil servants, nevertheless, the delays occurring in terms of engagement on a new public service agreement and the implementation of local bargaining are crippling our ability to make real progress. While I can only speak on behalf of our members, I sincerely believe that the delay in having claims paid undermines confidence in the process across the board with all workers in the Civil Service and wider public service, and in the case of the Defence Forces serves as a push factor for personnel who might otherwise remain. I cannot with any confidence say whether it is down to overbureaucracy or understaffing within the Department of public expenditure, but the time taken for decisions to be made needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Delays in addressing issues have a devastating impact on our ability as a responsible IR partner to hold the centre and bring people along with us.

A further difficulty is the use of what can only be described as sharp language. For example, the specialist pay review mechanism outlined in the Commission on the Defence Forces report was described as a mechanism but clearly defined as a body of people to look at issues. Unfortunately, when it came to 2025 and our calls for the establishment of the aforementioned body, we were told, "No" because it was a mechanism and that this mechanism was local bargaining. In effect, there was no bespoke solution despite this being advanced in the public sector pay review body report and the Commission on the Defence Forces. Despite my long service in IR, I was still shocked to hear of this turn of affairs, and in November 2025 I wrote to the Department of Defence regarding the establishment of a specialist pay review body. The following is an extract from the correspondence. I do not know if the Cathaoirleach wants me to read this into the record.

Yes, please.

Okay, Cathaoirleach. It reads:

Notwithstanding PDFORRA’s ongoing belief that the recommendations on pages 73-74 of the Public Sector Pay Commissions [sic] report from 2019, insofar as the requirement to undertake a review should have encompassed tech grade 6, as much as it did Tech 2, the requirement to undertake a bespoke approach to specialists at Tech 6 is urgently required.

Given the following extract from the Commission on the Defence Forces report, the position that appears now being adopted is disingenuous and at odds with the spirit and intent of the Commission’s report, outlined below:

"The Commission notes that, in certain other parts of the public service, there are in existence regrading and job evaluation schemes that have been shown to operate successfully, on a managed basis, and in line with public pay policy parameters. Furthermore, the Commission’s view is that the mechanism used to implement this recommendation should comprise members with backgrounds in military HR management, as well as members with expertise in public service pay policy."

What PDFORRA meant regarding “the position that appears now being adopted” was that our association had been informed earlier that week that the Department of public expenditure had potentially advised the Department of Defence that the mechanism to be used to increase specialist pay was the local bargaining clause, which applies equally to all cohorts of unions and associations.

Clearly, the position now purported to be adopted by the Department of public expenditure is inconsistent with the intent of the commission whose report was adopted by the Government. I would suggest that serious questions must be asked as to how a Department can circumvent, or appear to circumvent, the intent of the Government with a decision that is having, and will continue to have, catastrophic consequences for the Air Corps and the Defence Forces more generally. Further to this, even when we do agree to pursue matters under local bargaining we are hindered with negative impacts. The failure to introduce the naval engineer technician allowance, NETA, from a request made by our Department that we agreed to over a year ago under the local bargaining provisions, is unconscionable. It is especially so if one considers that the officials in the Department of Defence are trying to introduce a measure to save technicians from departing.

Another issue that both representative associations have consistently highlighted, if I may with RACO, is the inequity associated with flat rated duty payments which, by their nature, have no correlation to the value of the work being undertaken by our members. In response to our inability to address the issue a joint complaint was submitted to the European Committee of Social Rights in 2021 with a ruling being made in 2025. In the interim, no work appears to have been done to address the glaring inequity associated with the duty pay system and the issue of public holidays. Frustrating members further is the current delay in the consideration of the recent ruling on Articles 2.2 and 4.2 of the European Committee of Social Rights as it pertains to the joint complaint taken by PDFORRA and RACO. Consideration is not being given to the ruling until after 11 October despite this ruling having been made in November 2025 and issued in February 2026. This can only be described as another example of a dysfunctional system.

This is not the first time that PDFORRA has encountered this intransigence following a positive ruling from the European Social Rights Committee. It occurred previously following our successful ruling in 2018, and thankfully, following our appearance before this committee in 2021, the Government then granted us associate status with ICTU. This has been a game-changer for us but it took three years post a positive ruling from the committee, the threat of legal action and appearance before this committee before the grant of associate status was made. Moreover, despite pronouncements prior to the grant of status that the sky would fall it has not but lots of good members departed the Defence Forces. It was a modern-day version of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. The figures in terms of members speak for themselves.

In 2021, I pointed out to this committee that if all the sergeant vacancies were filled we would have 650 vacancies. Today, we have more than 600. My prediction of this was made five years ago. If someone such as myself can so accurately predict the future I would hate to advise the committee on where I think certain aspects of service are going to be in another five years’ time.

Morale is a question that is always considered by the committee and there has been a positive movement in recent years. The issue of contracts has largely been resolved with personnel being permitted to stay until 62 if they meet the stringent medical and fitness requirements. The issue of free medical care has been positive and free rationing of recruits and apprentices has bolstered the take-home pay of these cohorts. The removal of the pay ledges and the flat rating of the MSA were all positive, but we must not rest on our laurels. Basic pay has moved considerably since 2017 when I took up office but the cost-of-living crisis is starting to eat into the positive measures that we achieved. Our association, in co-operation with officials from the Department of Defence and officials from the Department of public expenditure, have achieved much in terms of the sectoral and local bargaining provisions. While we fundamentally disagree with them on the issue of the tech 6 review, they have worked hard to have a positive impact on a number of specialist branches like the intelligence section, the Army Ranger Wing, ARW, certain technician claims and the expansion of technician pay to other areas that had been considered line only. This positive direction of travel must continue for all members of the Defence Forces. We need to prioritise those who were not subject to the tech 2 to tech 6 review in 2021 in order to allow us to retain skilled staff, maintain the safety of assets and deliver value for the Exchequer. We must have streamlined mechanisms to address IR issues as they arise and we have to have a system can address historical issues outside of dogmatic approaches to IR issues.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the lack of an adjudicator for our conciliation and arbitration scheme as another issue, but having entered into legal correspondence in the past number of weeks it would not be appropriate for me to discuss the matter in depth while correspondence is being exchanged. On behalf of PDFORRA members I want to thank the committee for its work and I look forward to answering any questions members may have.

Go raibh maith agat. I am sure that will give rise to a lot of interesting questions.

I thank committee members for the invitation to address them here today. Before I start, I wish to echo the condolences of RACO to Senator Gerard Craughwell, who has always been a fantastic advocate for the members of the Defence Forces, on the sad loss of his wife, Helen. I also extend condolences to our colleagues in PDFORRA on the loss of their members Ross Dunne and to his family, friends and his comrades. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha dílse.

The Representative Association of Commissioned Officers, RACO, represents the overwhelming majority of serving commissioned officers across the Army, Air Corps and Naval Service, some 97% of all officers. I wish to set out plainly where things stand on defence investment, on the conciliation and arbitration scheme, on the joint task force established for the EU Presidency, on cadet pay, and on the pace of implementation of the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. Running throughout is a single recurring theme: a persistent lack of consultation with RACO on matters that fall squarely within our scope of representation.

The strength of the Permanent Defence Force stands roughly 2,000 below its establishment of 9,700, and almost 4,000 below the Commission on the Defence Forces level of ambition two, LOA 2, figure of 11,500, with no commensurate reduction in operational or training commitments. LOA 2 is supposed to be reached by 2028 according to the commission but will not be met until at least 2035 at the earliest, according to the Department of Defence. Modest increases in personnel over the past two years are very welcome, but against a widening target they represent managed decline, not recovery. Meanwhile the civilian side of the Department has continued to grow. We are now at a ratio of one Department of Defence civil servant for every 16 uniformed personnel, a ratio that has been narrowing steadily for years. An organisation whose core output is trained, deployable personnel simply cannot sustain a model where the administrative tail grows while the operational strength it exists to support shrinks.

We are more than four years past publication of the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. While the Government fully accepted its recommendations, the updated implementation plan produced earlier this year has pushed timelines further out. Multiple achievable, time-bound targets such as command and force structures, pay review mechanisms, acquisition of essential equipment and development of training establishments have already been missed, with little visible accountability. Global instability, as we know, has only deepened since 2022, and the gap between the rhetoric of transformation and the reality faced by a junior officer or non-commissioned officer carrying a workload built for a force one and a half times its current size has widened, not narrowed.

As the committee has heard from PDFORRA, the conciliation and arbitration scheme is the sole formal mechanism through which our members' pay and conditions of service can be raised and resolved, and it is simply not functioning. There has been no independent adjudicator in place under the scheme for 15 months, since 30 June 2025. I have to say this is due to a blunt refusal by the Department of public expenditure and reform to adhere to the agreed arrangements. Now consider prior to that date, in the five years preceding, there was a two-year gap with no adjudicator. Where this is the mechanism of last resort when two sides cannot agree, without it claims simply stall indefinitely and confidence in the scheme has been completely eroded among our membership. The Government, with respect, cannot simply point to the mere existence of a scheme as a legitimate industrial relations mechanism while at the same time starving it of the necessary resources to function. At the same time, local bargaining claims due under the current pay agreement are more than a year late in payment, constituting a breach of that agreement by the Government. That does not bode well for members' confidence going into any future pay talks. As we all know, unlike every other public service union currently balloting for industrial action against the State, our members have no such option, by law and by the nature of the institution.

That restriction is reasonable and we accept it but it carries an obligation on Government. Where the right to withdraw labour is removed, the alternative mechanism must work. It currently does not, by design, and the scheme continues to limp along with no oversight or accountability, either from the external oversight body, or the relevant Departments.

I also draw the committee's attention to the ruling handed down in February by the European Committee of Social Rights, which was also touched on by PDFORRA. The committee found Ireland to be in violation of the European Social Charter over the prohibition on overtime payments and the absence of adequate public holiday premiums for Defence Forces personnel. That ruling should have been a wake-up call for the Government and was an opportunity to fairly remunerate Defence Forces members. Instead, as we have heard, months have passed and the Department simply refuses to engage substantively with the representative associations on the implications of the ruling, while at the same time Ireland holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union and presents itself to our partners as a responsible, rules-respecting leader on European affairs. Declining to engage with a finding that the State is breaching its own military personnel's social rights, in the middle of that Presidency, cannot be a good look.

We recognise the scale and importance of the ongoing security operation the Defence Forces is delivering for the European Presidency and our members involved in the joint task force deserve our thanks. However, Government cannot simultaneously accept the commission's recommendations on how the Defence Forces should be organised and developed and then stand up a structure outside that agreed framework that strips experienced personnel out of units that are already under strength. Every officer and NCO pulled into that task force is one fewer in a unit that could not spare them in the first place and no account appears to have been taken of that knock-on cost to mentoring, supervision or governance. Worse, within that task force senior officers responsible for planning, co-ordination and delivery, regularly briefing political and media stakeholders on land, air and maritime components of the operation, are not receiving the basic allowance that more junior personnel working alongside them do. That is separately part of a wider pattern whereby our Minister, our Chief of Staff and our Department of Defence are knowingly overseeing the rostering of senior officers on 24-hour duties - including maritime patrols, counter-UAS operations, engineer searches and security tasks - in the full knowledge at the point the roster is set that they will not be paid for it. This is blatant exploitation of our members' loyalty and sends precisely the wrong message to the very people Government is relying on to lead this operation. It truly represents defence on the cheap.

RACO has been raising the issue of low cadet pay for years and it is a problem the Government has simply allowed to continue. Cadets are the lowest-paid Defence Forces members and have been left behind. Once their actual working time is properly accounted for, they are paid well below the national minimum wage while also being excluded from a range of working time and other protections. These are members at the very start of a military career, undertaking demanding training and service, on pay that makes it increasingly hard to justify choosing the Defence Forces at all. Recruitment campaigns cannot fix a problem created by poor terms and conditions and the Government should not be surprised we are losing good people while this remains unaddressed, especially when we consider the terms of the single pension scheme and how that impacts new entrants.

RACO welcomes the increase in defence spending from roughly €1.1 billion in 2022 to €1.49 billion this year, with €1.7 billion in capital funding under the 2026 to 2030 development plan. However, the defence budget still sits around 0.22% of GDP or 0.3% of GNI, making it the lowest in the European Union, and this sends a signal to partners that we are simply not serious about defence and security. There is huge investment required to catch up on decades of underinvestment and the October budget will reveal whether Ireland is ready to play its part.

Although necessary and vital, money spent on equipment and infrastructure alone will not deliver capability; people are capability. If we want a Defence Forces able to operate at level of ambition 2, let alone level of ambition 3, this requires competitive pay and pensions, proper allowances including overtime where appropriate, fair conditions and dispute-resolution mechanisms that actually work, not defence and security on a shoestring. Defence Force regulations set out clearly what falls within our scope of representation. Time and again, RACO has been presented with apparently settled decisions rather than engaged in a consultative process on matters such as organisational structures, allowances, or organisational change arising from the commission's recommendations. This is a poor reflection on any employer, let alone one seeking to portray itself as an employer of choice and seeking to significantly increase its workforce.

A Chathaoirligh, our members remain professional and committed but that commitment is being asked to substitute for investment, functioning industrial relations and basic good faith. RACO is not asking for special treatment on behalf of our membership. We are asking the Government simply to honour commitments already made, properly resource the conciliation and arbitration scheme, fix the task force allowance anomaly, address cadet pay and consult us as the law requires. The message is straightforward: the Government has made enough commitments and our members now need delivery.

We are happy to take the committee's questions, as appropriate.

Go raibh maith agat. Mr. Richardson of the RDFRA is next.

Thank you, a Chathaoirligh. Before I start, on behalf of RDFRA I offer sincere condolence to Senator Craughwell as well as to the friends, family and comrades of Ross Dunne. We are all part of the one defence family and our members feel these losses just as keenly, so thank you for the opportunity.

A Chathaoirligh and members, on behalf of the Reserve Defence Force Representative Association I thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee. It is our intention to update the committee on progress since our last appearance in September 2025 and to raise issues we hope it will be in a position to assist us with.

Last year, we appeared before the committee hot on the heels of a Department of Defence announcement that a wide range of Reserve activities would suddenly revert to being unpaid. This caused understandable anger among our members. At the same time, the association was frustrated with a complete lack of progress on a range of other issues, some complex, but some relatively minor. Since then we are glad to announce that the vast majority of RDF activities have now been recognised for what they are, namely, meaningful, operational contributions to the work of the Defence Forces overall, and can now be undertaken again in a paid capacity. The maximum amount reimbursable for a reservist’s annual medical has also been increased significantly and while some other issues, such as the provision of security duty allowance to reservists, representation of the First Line Reserve by RDFRA and the obtaining of a form of military funeral rights for serving reservists have not yet been remedied, we are hopeful, and cautiously trusting, that these matters will be finalised shortly.

However, an overarching issue remains, and this is the glacial pace at which RDF matters, including both issues raised by RDFRA and the Department of Defence’s own official policies on the Reserve are being dealt with. This can be clearly seen in the differences between the implementation timelines for Reserve projects outlined in the initial detailed implementation plan for the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces from November 2023 and the detailed implementation plan update of February 2026. For example, the 2023 document outlined that the office of Reserve affairs within the Defence Forces would be established at full operating capacity by the end of March 2025. The 2026 document amended this to the end of March 2026. Today, full operating capacity has still not be achieved and, bizarrely, none of the reservist appointments in the office of Reserve affairs have yet been created. The 2023 document stated a Reserve assistant chief of defence, and Reserve service assistant chiefs, would be appointed by the end of September 2025. It was understood these appointments would also be created in tandem with new positions for Reserve senior enlisted leaders. Now, implementation has been pushed back over two years to the end of December 2027. Necessary legislative changes have been cited as the reason for the delay yet together section 24 and the Second Schedule to the Defence Act 1954 already permit these additional ranks to exist within the Reserve. In 2023, specific skill set profiling as part of a wider RDF recruitment plan project was due to be completed by the end of June 2025. Earlier this year, it was announced this would now be pushed back to the end of June 2026. However, two months past this revised deadline, this project has also not been completed. Similarly, as part of the RDF recruitment plan, the introduction of lateral entry mechanisms into the Reserve was, according to the 2023 document, due to be completed by the end of June 2025. This year, the deadline was revised to the end of September 2026. That gives this project less than one month remaining before the new deadline is reached. RDFRA has also encountered a number of detailed implementation plan projects listed as completed under the 2026 update document, when this is, from the association’s perspective, not the case.

A project to introduce increased direct entry recruitment was listed as completed earlier this year when, to date, no actual increased direct entry recruitment has taken place. Similarly, a project to fast-track the process of former members of the Permanent Defence Force, PDF, joining the First Line Reserve is noted as completed. While this is certainly the case for former PDF officers seeking to join the First Line Reserve, difficulties remain for former PDF enlisted personnel seeking to join it.

However, the biggest concern arising from these detailed implementation plan delays surrounds the project focused on employment protection legislation for members of the Reserve. In 2023, further evaluation on this project was due to be completed by the end of February 2025. Now, however, further evaluation is not due to conclude until the end of December 2027. RDFRA accepts that there was an unforeseen issue that contributed to this delay but this now means that the design and deliver stages of this project are not due to commence until January 2028 at the earliest. If and when this project comes to a conclusion, we might have entered the 2030s.

The association’s big fear is that the Reserve simply does not have the time to incur such lengthy delays in the implementation of vital initiatives, which were initially slated to be introduced years ago. RDFRA is greatly concerned about the growing elevation of process over productivity. There are seemingly endless amounts of business cases, proposals and advice papers. Follow-on requests for information are asked for. When they are provided, one would expect that these might clarify issues and help speed up the implementation of resolutions. Instead, however, lengthy delays crop up again and again, often with only vague explanations provided as to why this has happened. While proper governance, oversight and due diligence are vital, and no one individual or group of persons is solely responsible, at what point does organisational procrastination become unreasonable? At what point does it begin to negatively impact the defence of the State?

It is true that there is a genuine host of recent positive developments to point to, such as historically high Reserve budgetary allocation levels and strong applicant numbers for the Reserve. These are all extremely welcome. However, without the timely introduction of the foundational supports required for Reserve growth and development, as outlined in the detailed implementation plan, these positive developments are being built on a foundation of sand.

Aside from these unimplemented projects in the detailed implementation plan, the Reserve requires a host of edits to its primary governing document, Defence Force Regulation R5. Again, business cases and advice papers appear to disappear into a black hole of internal process. Years pass and these delays are then presented as just the natural way of such things.

The RDFRA wishes to emphasise what other states can clearly see, that is, reservists are a cost-effective way of gaining and retaining both specialist talent and scalable mass. We cannot replace a permanent standing force but every other modern military uses reservists to meaningful augment and or reinforce its regular component. To achieve this, especially in an Irish context, given the baseline that Reserve regeneration started from in recent years, there needs to be a distinct sense of urgency to the work surrounding the Reserve. Senior stakeholders need to truly see the Reserve for what it is – not an historical artefact or organisation that has to be somehow suffered and tolerated but rather, a great opportunity to enhance the current and future defence of the State. I thank the committee and welcome any questions that members of the committee might have.

I will now turn to members of the committee, if they wish to indicate. At the outset, as representative bodies of the Defence Forces, they have outlined serious failings and commitments that have been made. Obviously, we have a lot of documents and commitments and the aim is to make our Defence Forces fit for purpose. Anything that has been said here today will bring us backwards rather than forwards. The witnesses rightly pointed out that, in the midst of the EU Presidency, we certainly should not be here talking about what we are discussing today. I look forward to the questions from members. I will start with Deputy Ó Laoghaire, followed by Senator Craughwell.

First, I echo the expressions of sympathy with Senator Craughwell and the family of the member of the Defence Forces regarding that tragic death recently. I express my condolences to his family.

What we are hearing is a disgrace. It is absolutely appalling that we have a situation where, increasingly, there is a focus on investing in our Defence Forces – rightly so – but it seems that the State is neglecting and deliberately obstructing the ability to ensure that we invest in the Defence Forces’ greatest asset, namely, the men and women of the Defence Forces. A huge amount of responsibility is being placed on members of the Defence Forces, particularly in recent months. That seems to be taken for granted by the Government and the Department, and that is appalling.

I will list a few examples in this regard. There is the issue of allowance not being paid to officers who are working extraordinary hours during the meeting of the Ministers, as well as issues surrounding things that are already signed off on through local bargaining. Sometimes, I feel frustrated when I hear the Department of Defence talk about local bargaining because local bargaining seems to be the loaves and the fishes. The Department expects it to do it all when, ultimately, it is only 1%. The naval engineer technician allowance has not been progressed by the Department of public expenditure and reform. As I understand it, it might have progressed it in the past couple of weeks but it was certainly the case during the summer that some 6,000 personnel were waiting to be paid a total of €3.7 million in claims under local bargaining agreements. Maybe RACO and PDFORRA can confirm that but, as of June, it still had not been signed off. That is absolutely appalling. It is right that we significantly invest in our Defence Forces in order to redress the neglect in recent years but this is the place it must start. We must ensure we are able to hold onto committed, capable people.

I have a couple of questions. I will start with RACO. This is already on the record but I wish for it to be on the record of this particular meeting because it is important. The implementation plan arising from the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces is already significantly behind. How many delayed timelines were in that revised implementation plan?

The implementation plan, as discussed, was created in 2023 following the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces in February 2022. It provided timelines for key projects, which relate to issues such as HR, organisational structure and the Reserve. Unfortunately, in February 2026, a revised and updated detailed implementation plan was produced, as the Deputy rightly outlined. By our count, 43 of those 130 projects were arbitrarily extended by between one and two years. This is not about words on a page, simple project management or traffic light systems; this is about people’s lives and livelihoods. People’s morale, welfare, purpose and motivation are affected by these things. There must be accountability, but there is none. It is very disheartening.

I agree. It is even more worrying when I hear RDFRA say that some of the things that the Department believes are completed are not in fact completed. Some of these projects are vitally important, such as the medium-lift helicopter, which has gone back two years. We are talking about ensuring we have a full picture of what is happening in our seas and skies, and we are putting it back by two years. It is absolutely remarkable.

Will the witnesses confirm whether the issue of 6,000 personnel waiting to be paid a total of €3.7 million in claims under local bargaining has been resolved? This was an issue in June and I have heard nothing to the contrary since.

Some of the claims have been paid. We have signed off on six conciliation council reports, CCRs, at this point in time out of 35. It is painfully slow.

Okay. I have one further question for RACO and then my next question is for PDFORRA and RACO. RACO has been vocal – this probably applies across the board - on the need to advance the issue of the long service increment. Do the witnesses have any comment in that regard? All witnesses across the board can possibly answer that.

It is an issue for us. It was one of the recommendations from the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. As the Deputy rightly pointed out, local bargaining is the panacea to all our ills. It has been thrown into that. We do not believe it is appropriate that this issue goes under local bargaining. It has to be funded from central funds. This goes back to the sticking plaster effect that we have had by virtue of the fact that we were excluded from appropriate industrial relations mechanisms for years. It is our sincere belief that there should be a bespoke solution to the issue of long service increments.

That also goes back to the correspondence that was read. A minimalist approach is being taken when there is clearly a need to evaluate a lot of grades.

I am concerned as well with the issue of the working time directive.

My understanding, and perhaps I am not understanding it right, is that a big part of the issue is that an awful lot of Defence Forces personnel are working inordinate hours in long shifts of up to 24 hours or more and that is not being recorded properly. The Department does not have an adequate mechanism for evaluating the kind of overtime that is done and it is, therefore, not being compensated. I might not be understanding the situation but I think that is a big part of it, as well as some of the stuff around terms and conditions. Will the witnesses give me a comment on that issue? What more needs to be done to ensure that the situation relating to the working time directive and the fairly damning decision by the European Committee of Social Rights is properly rectified?

We are currently recording working time on the PMS system. It is not a clock-in, clock-out system. We are recording time to some extent. I know that PDFORRA has looked for a data dump. We are looking for the data recorded for working time over the past year. We still do not have that data. We looked for it six or seven weeks ago. It should be readily available. We were told at a meeting that it was there and we should be able to get it. We cannot tell if members' working time is being properly recorded. That is one of the problems. There are exemptions to or derogations from the working time directive. Some activities are outside the scope of the directive. We appreciate that. However, there are some that we do not believe are outside that we think the Department is considering to be in scope. The personnel who should be outside its scope are being included in certain activities and we do not believe that is proper. There is a correlation between this and the positive ruling we got in relation to overtime. You need to have a record of time in order to show what time is overtime. We were promised that strand 3 would consider what is a proper day within the Defence Forces, what are core hours, weeks and months. We were told over two and a half years ago that it would be done or considered. That has now morphed into other areas. It is deeply frustrating that we do not have proper policies and procedures around core hours. I cannot tell the committee when strand 3 will be done to effectively secure core hours for personnel.

I want to move on to Senator Craughwell. Do not be pushing it, Deputy Ó Laoghaire.

I might come around again.

We are starting off a new year. Does RACO wish to say something specifically on that issue?

Yes. I will augment what Mr. Guinan said. Recording working time is the fundamental enabler to ensure that people are looked after. Up to now, the official side, that is, the Department of Defence, has simply refused to define the working day and working week, as bizarre as that sounds. In 2023, when we were negotiating the implementation of the working time directive, that was a key enabler that we highlighted. It was the foundation. However, the Department decided that could come later but it still has not arrived. It bleeds into everything we do. It seems like we are almost deliberately missing a trick in terms of the overtime ruling, which cannot be discussed according to the Department of Defence, and by not adequately recording working time to ensure that where people are over that time they get adequate time off. There is a lot of work still to be done.

I thank everybody who expressed condolences on the loss of my wife of 49 years. I thank them very much.

I will throw out a couple of things of together and allow all three organisations to jump in where they feel it is important to do so. The first thing that crosses my mind is conciliation and arbitration, and the absence of an adjudicator. Lieutenant Colonel King pointed out the absence of an adjudicator. It is the one area that members have where they have some little bit of leverage. They cannot go on strike, etc. Where is the logjam? Has the oversight body at any stage stepped in to try to assist with this? Surely its job is to ensure that we have good industrial relations.

In the second paragraph of his presentation, Lieutenant Colonel King mentioned the growth of staff in the Department of Defence. He mentioned that the ratio is now 1:16. It is important that we take note that the staff in the Department of Defence, including assistant general secretaries, principal officers, assistant principal officers, etc., is growing, all of them on massive salaries, commensurate with the size of the organisation. That is a matter we need to look into. I do not expect our delegates to comment on that point unless they feel they can.

Both PDFORRA and RACO have made representations on the post-2013 pension. I have discussed that issue with civil servants. They do not understand what I am talking about. The answer I have always been given is that everybody is subject to it. They do not understand that members of the Defences Forces have to retire at 62 years of age. They do not understand the impact that has on them. The supplementary pension has been gone since 2013 and that is not understood by the civil servants. Is there anything that the witnesses or we can do to simplify and explain that to the relevant personnel?

Mr. Guinan spoke about specialists. I am totally depressed, having gone through his statement. Turning to RDFRA, and considering the loss of these specialists, are those specialists being advised to join the reserves so that we can at least retain some level of the expertise within the organisation?

We are losing good people early in their working lives. Pension abatement, which is also part of the 2013 scheme, means that anybody leaving is not going to go to the public service. We spend vast sums of money. I am sure that Lieutenant Colonel King's young officers are underpaid as cadets. My colleague, Deputy Callaghan, has raised the issue of cadet pay several times at this committee. Are we losing cadets now as well? Is there an unwillingness among young graduates to come into the organisation? I will leave it at that. I might come back in again later.

I thank the Senator. I will start and hand over to my colleagues in PDFORRA and RDFRA afterwards. On the adjudicator, I note that our PDFORRA colleagues are currently initiating legal action. However, we are not so I can speak about the issue. As I said, it is over 15 months since we had an adjudicator. We have an agreement with the Department of Defence, military leadership and the Department of public expenditure and reform, signed by the Ministers for Defence and public expenditure and reform, that an adjudicator would be provided for the conciliation and arbitration scheme. That adjudicator would be subject to the agreement of the parties. When the adjudicator post came to its conclusion in June 2025, we were presented with a fait accompli of a roll-over to the same adjudicator again. That was not acceptable to PDFORRA or RACO. We made that clear. Under the terms of the scheme, we proposed other names when the Departments were unwilling to propose other names and fulfil their obligations. We eventually invoked the assistance of the Labour Court. We went to the Labour Court and received a ruling that included a nomination, which, unbelievably, has been completely ignored by the Department of public expenditure and reform. This is not a Department of Defence issue but a Department of public expenditure and reform issue. There is no accountability.

We sought assistance from our external oversight body. Unfortunately, that has not materialised. We sought assistance from our Minister, who, to her credit, has written to the Minister for public expenditure and reform, but to no avail. We are left in a situation where we, rightly, cannot take industrial action. We are at a serious disadvantage because our only mechanism to advance claims is through the adjudicator and third-party arbitration systems. There were at the last count six claims waiting for adjudication. These are claims that affect the livelihoods of our members. I am sure that PDFORRA has several such cases. It seems like the game is rigged. That is not a hard luck story. It has a serious capability and retention impacts for the members of the Defence Forces at a time when we are trying to boost numbers.

What I said about the ratio was an observation. We are going down and the ratio is narrowing. I cast my mind back to an article in the Defence Forces Review of 2021.

One of our commissioned officer members wrote an academically reviewed piece for this publication under the auspices of Dublin City University at the time, which pointed to a ratio of 1:23 between civil servants and soldiers. At the time there was shock and actually a very defensive reaction from the Department of Defence. Its officials were quite annoyed. An internal investigation was set up at the time to find out where this person was getting their information from. Here we are now four years later and the ratio continues to narrow. I have no problem with the growth of the Department. I welcome it if that means we are going to get our work done quicker, but it is slowing down so there is something wrong.

I agree it is a complex issue but the designers of the post-2013 pension cannot abdicate responsibility for its explanation and for the analysis of its impacts. The impact of our members is that it is a retention issue. Members do not see a long-term future in Óglaigh na hÉireann because of that pension. The pension that was designed for fast accrual uniformed services was first to compensate for a shortened career due to mandatory retirement ages well below the State pension age, but also for the robust nature of military service and service in the fire brigade, Prison Service and An Garda Síochána, and that has just been disregarded. It is not a question of simply arbitrarily extending the retirement age. It is a question of also compensating for the robust nature of uniformed service in the State. That point has been lost by those who designed the pension.

Pension abatement is a no-brainer. The Naval Service is currently in big trouble. A Naval Service regeneration plan is washing around the Houses. I think it is with the Department of public expenditure and reform at the moment. A cornerstone of that is rejoiners. Without rejoiners, the Naval Service will cease to function but rejoiners will not rejoin if they know that their pensions are going to be abated. That little bit of consideration should be looked at very carefully.

I did not express my sympathies on the passing on Senator Craughwell's wife but I am sure he understands that all in PDFORRA send their condolences.

In the absence of an adjudicator, PDFORRA is litigious. We have had to take numerous legal actions over the years. We took about 13 or 14 cases on working time back in the day. We had to engage the Department of Defence and the chair of conciliation and arbitration in legal action because we could not get a particular report. We need a CCR to be able to go to a adjudicator. Last year we could not even get the Department to disagree with a position that we wanted to adopt and we had to take the chair of the arbitration scheme and the Department to court to get a report recording disagreement, which is a procedural defect. Thankfully, we got the report but it should not have to be this way. We do not want to take legal actions. I implore committee members if they have any sort of ability of all to say "Go and talk to these people" and appoint an adjudicator. We are will to discuss it before we go to court at expense to the State. It is not good enough. I will not go much further on that. We did not petition the oversight body in relation to it. Our Minister told us that she wrote and that she had not been able to further the matter. At that point in time we decided legal action is the only course available to us. If people are not listening to the line Minister, I do not know what options there are.

I will have to leave it there at the moment because we are gone well over. I want to go to Deputy Smith. I hope we can come back for a second round because I know questions had been addressed to the organisations.

I thank the witnesses for their statements. I pass on the condolences on behalf of myself and the Labour Party on the passing of Ross Dunne as well.

Two things struck me when I take the statements together. First, the power of the Department of public expenditure that we are seeing not only in this area but across politics to cut across Government policy is something that we, both in government and opposition, need to get a handle on. That was illustrated quite clearly in the submissions we have had so far. One of Mr. King's quotes that really struck me was "defence and security on a shoestring" - particularly including that word "security". What we are dealing with mainly here through these presentations here today are terms and conditions, pay, industrial relations architecture and rights - the nuts and bolts of it. When we take defence and security on a shoestring, which is what we have done for decades in this country, and we game that out, it ends up in a situation where we have British and French naval ships deployed 22 km off our waters to provide security during the EU Presidency, which I find embarrassing. I find that to be a national embarrassment. A lot of people in politics just do not want to discuss that. It happens; they do not want to tackle the reality of that, and it throws up big operational problems as well. We have to then deploy Irish naval officers to be on the bridges of those ships in case a threat comes into our territory. It is an absolute mess. I imagine, though I have not spoken to any British or French military officials or officers in relation to this, but they must not hold us in the highest regard in how we tackle our defence and security. It is a bigger problem. We spoke about this as a committee in terms of how we can discuss national security and that is a whole other thing. However, it is something I want to put on record. I know it was not the central theme of the submissions but it is important to go down, join up the dots in terms of where our under-investment ultimately leads us.

We have spoken about and we have raised in committee and in the Dáil the impact that pay and conditions have had on recruitment targets in the Defence Forces. Are the representatives from RACO, PDFORRA and RDFRA able to comment on any other barriers to recruitment? Are potential members of the Defence Forces put off from joining for other reasons that are not pay and conditions or pensions relation, such as overseas deployment? I am thinking our mission in the Lebanon will likely be coming to an end soon. Without veering too much into policy, are those the kind of issues that will impact retention and recruitment?

Any young woman or man joining the Defence Forces is not really thinking about the pay at that time, but the older they are when they start, the quicker it bites. We have raised the induction age now to 39. RACO believes that is too high but we were not consulted at the time. It was something that was just a unilateral decision. We can see the rationale behind it to open up and widen the pool. However, when that comes up against an inadequate pension scheme or the robust nature of induction training we find that candidates in their late 30s are just not really as able as young men and women in their late teens or early 20s to withstand the training but also to overcome the issues at home. For example, if they are married, have dependents or a mortgage, two years in the cadet school on very little money is sometimes unsustainable. As to other barriers, we have very good systems in place and infrastructure is getting better. Great credit is due to the Department of Defence in that regard and to our own core of engineers in some of the infrastructural developments. There is also great credit, if I may say, due to the representative associations for driving the working time directive through because some of the fringe benefits of the directive have been increased and enhanced welfare measures for members of the Defence Forces of all ranks. We thankfully now have a good healthcare system for all ranks whereas before it was not. Barriers to entry in terms of overseas service may come once the overseas service slows down. People will still join. They just may not stay that long if they do not feel like they are being exercised in the manner or having the opportunities they thought they would have.

I ask Mr. Guinan to comment on that but also on the lack of aircraft technicians mentioned in the statement? Will he expand on how operationally on a day-to-day basis where that has impacted us or as a Defence Forces being able to maybe take part in certain operations or training?

I am the father of a young man who entered the Defence Forces this week. My son entered the joint induction training centre, JITC, as an enlisted man on Monday. Do I see the lack of overseas opportunities probably impacting on his retention with the Defence Forces? Potentially, yes.

He is an adventurous young man who wants to serve the State. It goes back as old as time. Soldiers stuck in barracks get bored. We want excitement. We thrive on adventure. That will have an impact.

In terms of the lack of technicians and how it has impacted, lots of personnel are having to travel overseas to Belgium on a regular basis to oversee the repairs and maintenance of aircraft. That impacts on their family lives. They are getting subsistence and travel expenses for it but it does impact on their families. There are so few technicians out there that the rotation of personnel through that is bound to have an impact on them. One of the biggest drivers of personnel out of service is negative impacts on the family. A NATO report from 2010 asked what was one of the biggest drivers of personnel out of service within the armed forces and it was negative impacts on families and that lack of work-life balance. We are definitely seeing that, by virtue of the reduction in the number of technicians. We do not have the capacity. As I have said, we are short 150 technicians, if not more. We are only able to take on 28 every year. This number was given in the report of the Public Sector Pay Commission that the maximum capacity of technicians we could train within Baldonnel was 28. We are not reaching that figure. If we have to try to backfill all of those vacancies, it will take another ten to 15 years, which is a lot of time for the people who are there to be under the severe stress and strain that they are. I cannot emphasise enough that these people really are suffering. It goes back to 2019 when the State was warned that it needed to urgently implement measures in relation to the aircraft technicians. In an SOS report from 2025 paragraph 13 states that these people need to be paid more. It has not been done. There has not been the necessary engagement to put in a proper service there and it is impacting on those personnel. There will be problems with that.

It was 95 out of the 216 positions that had not been filled for the technicians.

To double down on the aircraft technician and aircraft engineer's issue, it is three legs of a stool in Baldonnel or in the Air Corps. We are talking about pilots, ATC and the technicians. Without them working and functioning, they fail collectively. We have already seen near collapse within ATC. Again, it took that for action, despite reports before. It is as if we do not believe our own reports and that was a joint report at time, between the Department and military management. Pilots had a service commitment scheme introduced, which bucked the trend of some of them leaving but again, as Mr. Guinan alluded to, there is a capacity of 28 but it is the timeframe then to get them to the level of aircraft inspector. It is somewhere in the region of 12 years to get to that level, as a person progresses through things. Recruitment numbers are positive and there is great interest in the Defence Forces but it is to get the capability to the level of what we need to replace. We cannot take off the shelf, or it is very difficult, or there are not that many direct entries coming in to replace those levels. It is a huge problem. Something like that collapsing has a direct impact also on pilots' progression and on progression of ATCs. These are things we are trying to address already because we have seen them collapse. It just seems almost negligent to have ignored the aircraft technicians at the same time. A more holistic approach when trying to solve issues in the Air Corps would have been to approach all three together, instead of acting surprised as another one falls and another one falls. It is remarkably poor management.

We will move on to Deputy Stanley.

My apologies for being late. I had questions in the Dáil. I welcome the representatives of RACO, PDFORRA and the Army Reserve. These are all important organisations. I want to ask Mr. Guinan a few questions. His opening statement lays bare the figures for aircraft technicians at Baldonnel. I was shocked when I saw them and the lack of progress, which he outlined. We are hearing from Ministers and heads of the Department that our air defence capabilities and technology are being improved. As has been outlined by Mr. Ryan regarding the three legs of the stool, if we do not have the technicians, it is like having a fleet of cars with no mechanics. It is as basic as that. It shows the difficulty we are in.

Regarding the 28 per year, Mr. Ryan outlined that it takes 12 years to actually get to the point of inspector level. Will the 28 even keep it at that level? The inspector positions are filled and only 95 of the 216 technician positions are filled. Will 28, given the fact that there are retirements and we know that technicians will be snapped up, as has often been outlined to us, by the private sector, even keep it at that level? What is Mr. Guinan's sense of that?

In simple terms, no. I spoke with a group of inspectors and technicians out there some weeks ago. Clearly, it will not keep pace. The salaries being offered outside the Air Corps are multiples of what personnel are receiving inside. We are losing people at a rate of knots out there. Since 2019 it went from, I think it was 66% strength over establishment figures down to about 48% now. All the warning signs are there. Everybody knows that this is set up to fail. We need measures now. I cannot emphasise this enough. The time has passed for talking about this. As Mr. Ryan rightly pointed out, it takes an inordinate time to backfill the positions. The dangers inherent with flying aircraft impact us all. If a plane goes down over west Dublin, let us imagine the damage it could do. I want to emphasise that if something happens it will not be because of the technicians' abilities. The people there are highly skilled and competent but it is the stress and the number of airframes they are being tasked to work on. The numbers of personnel there and the mix and match between civilian employees and Air Corps personnel will lead to an accident.

Mr. Guinan may not be able to answer this question. Regarding outsourcing, those of us who have been around public bodies know that outsourcing can be tricky. In recent years, down as far as local councils, outsourcing is turning out to be a lot more expensive in many cases than having direct labour. That is one problem it throws up. Some of the witnesses may have some insight into this.

The second issue is availability. The contractors will say to the OPW or the Defence Forces, "Sorry, we are busy at the moment so we will be around in a months' time to fix that for you." There are two parts to the question. Is the any knowledge about additional costs for outsourcing? If the Air Corps is hunting for companies to maintain aircraft and the companies know this, they can name their price and they know that they need not rush around because they have the contract anyway. Are those two things factors?

As I stated in my opening statement, the cost of outsourcing in two areas at the moment is €2.3 million per year.

Does that work out more expensive than if the technicians were on site and directly employed?

It has to be. If technicians are on site, you train them and have them capable of doing multiple types of work. Yes, it most definitely is.

Mr. Guinan mentioned the issue of sovereign capability or, in other words, that we have a Defence Forces that is equipped and has enough staff to protect our sovereignty, etc., with a sensible level of co-operation. It has been outlined already by other Deputies, and I will not repeat it, that the EU Presidency has shown that we do not have the capability we need. Mr. Guinan covered that well. What we hear from Ministers and the Department is a far rosier picture but I thank Mr. Guinan for that.

I wish to discuss the Reserve Defence Force. If the Defence Forces were starved of resources and funding over the years, the Reserve was absolutely knocked on the floor and totally ignored. It is an issue that I have raised here with the Department and Ministers and, indeed, others have as well. In terms of recruitment, what is the witnesses' sense of recruitment into the Reserve at the moment? Is it keeping pace? Will the Reserve reach the figures that we need to reach? The last I heard is that there were just under 1,000 personnel in the Reserve. What are the main challenges in building up that number? What are the barriers to young men and women joining? Fadó, fadó, it was no bother getting recruits for An Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil, FCA. People joined and went to camp for two or three weeks every year. I am looking for a sense of where the RDFRA sees that at the moment.

I thank the Deputy. We have an ongoing programme of recruitment and welcome the efforts that are being made. For example, there is a new PR campaign. If members have not seen it yet, it involves very professionally made adverts on TV and online. That is all welcome.

Above the line, there is a tremendous effort being made to recruit into the Reserve but the reality is that there is a number of systemic issues and bottlenecks within the whole recruitment process. Targets have been set by senior military leadership and we are striving to meet those targets. However, we find that there are still difficulties and delays with issues such as security clearances, for example, which are obviously required. We are not seeking to avoid them for our new potential members but they are simply taking too long. There are other issues in relation to the administration of medical and fitness tests. Some parts of the organisation have different experiences. We are a fairly resourceful lot and have found ways around that where we brought other resources in to deal with fitness tests and medical tests, for example. Overall, the process is very bureaucratic. It takes an enormous amount of effort from our own personnel. We have designated recruit liaison officers. That is an enormous task for any individual reservist because there is a lot of co-ordination. There is a delay. It takes a very, very long time to get into the Reserve. When you are seeking someone to join, you are looking at competition, if I can put it as such, from other potential State agencies like the Civil Defence or other community organisations which can give younger people an opportunity to do something which is interesting and worthwhile. They are the challenges.

In terms of trying to meet our own targets, within my unit we have calculated that, notwithstanding the fact that there is a lot of interest in joining, the number of people applying would need to increase by somewhere between 400% and 600% in order to meet the type of target because the funnel narrows on the way through. There is a number of barriers that potential reservists need to get through in order to be properly attested and enlisted into Óglaigh na hÉireann, and they will drop off for various reasons. Some people will fail the tests. As well as that there is the sheer length of time it can take - up to between 12 and 18 months in some cases. To keep individuals interested and engaged is a tremendous challenge. It is one that the recruit liaison officers do splendidly. There are challenges there.

Is it because the Garda security clearances are taking too long?

I would be reluctant to blame An Garda Síochána entirely for that. There is a number of security elements to it. The military intelligence and military security also have to do it.

There is a military one as well.

Yes. Again, it is very thorough. It can take a while. Often there are other agencies outside the State. For example, in my own area of operations, AO, we would have people who live in the North of Ireland who wish to join and you are reliant then on the PSNI, for example, and there can be some delays sometimes with that. There may also be people who have lived outside the State for a period or have moved to Ireland as an adult and have had living experiences elsewhere. We have to follow that up.

Thanks for that.

Deputy Catherine Callaghan, please.

Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh. I thank the witnesses. I would also like to be associated with the votes of sympathy and condolences for Flight Sergeant Dunne. I express my sympathy to his father, Peter, his mother, Sharon, his fiancée and his wider family. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

I struggle to know where to start. As a former member of the Air Corps, I am ar buile for my colleagues that we now find ourselves in this situation where we are leaking money. The Department of public expenditure is saying that we are stuck in a local bargaining arrangement and ignoring the pay review mechanism that has been recommended. I have spoken to the Minister for Defence on this. She has told me that she has continually made representations to the Department of public expenditure on this and I will impress upon her the need to continue to do that. She knows that herself anyway but I will be pressing on that as well.

I will now go through my questions and some figures that I have managed to find that relate to the actual costing of the ongoing process when it comes to the education of aircraft maintenance personnel and technicians in the Air Corps as it stands currently. I suggest that we think about how the lack of aircraft inspectors and the other vacancies contributed to the recent grounding of the PC-12 fleet and about how many maintenance support trades have been lost in the Air Corps in the last five years. I refer in particular to sheet metal, non-destructive testing, the battery shop, the hydraulic shop and the turbine shop. All of those are competencies that now have to be outsourced. That is a cost.

In terms of the base maintenance costs in 2025, the figures that I have found are as follows: the 135 maintenance costs were in the region of €120,000; PC-9 maintenance was just over €1 million; PC-12 maintenance was just over €700,000; for the Learjet it was €400,000; and the 139 maintenance was almost €3 million. I do not have the 2025 figures for the C295 or 6X. I calculate from my figures that maintenance costs, roughly, €5 million but that amount does not take into account the additional cost for external contractors to fill the gap of our instructors to teach and instruct. The flight information service officer, FISO, services cost in the region of €544,000 per quarter. FLS is about €1.1 million per year. The Leonardo contractors into Baldonnel cost €1.134 million per year. Finally, Rose Aviation instructors, in the technical school, cost approximately €200,000 in 2025. I am aghast that the Department of public expenditure is suggesting that this is value for money for the taxpayer, and we are not even talking about how we are paying on the double. We are paying to instruct. We are paying to train these Air Corps technicians and inspectors to the highest quality, so much so that they are highly sought after in the private sector.

A change did happen in aircraft maintenance during Covid because when aircraft were grounded technicians, like I was myself, realised there is another world outside of aircraft maintenance. There is the pharmaceutical sector and other technical industries in which our skills are much sought after.

Now, aircraft maintenance technicians and engineers are like hen’s teeth. There is something in the region of 36,000 people in Ireland employed in the aviation industry. Ryanair is currently recruiting licensed aircraft inspectors at rates of €119,000 for B1 and €121,000 for B2, which is the annual salary, whereas sergeant inspectors in the Air Corps are similarly qualified and their maximum pay scale is approximately €64,000. What is their value to the State? Has any capability or critical skills gap analysis been done as to how much it would cost the Irish Defence Forces and the Irish State to pay existing inspectors and technicians their appropriate pay - to pay them to their value - and how that would contrast to the other figures I have outlined, the millions of euro per annum that are being paid out to outsource maintenance and inspections? I am ar buile. I cannot say that strongly enough.

Where do we go from here? Mr. Guinan said that we need to do something - we need to see action. What are we talking about? Are we talking about insisting on a reviewed grading and pay scale arrangement for technicians and inspectors in the Air Corps? Are we talking about putting through the cost-benefit analysis? Are we talking about doing a detailed report on the retention capability and critical skills gap in the Air Corps? What are we talking about?

First things first. We need to value people. Every year for the past four or five years, an inordinate amount of PDFORRA’s time has been taken up with apprentice pay. We have to fight every single year to make sure that apprentices are paid appropriately - that they are paid as three-stars coming in and that they get their military service allowance. I have four apprentices with a solicitor, looking at claims in relation to their pay over recent years.

They are from the 80th apprentice class. I am aware of that.

First things first. We need to pay them appropriately when they are starting off. People become disillusioned within the first couple of years after coming in. What do we need to do? There have been numerous studies. The SOS study from 2025 says that we need to pay the technicians. Paragraph 13 of that report states that we need to pay technicians more appropriately, and that a study needs to be done. PDFORRA is looking at the potential viability of undertaking a critical skills gap analysis. We are waiting for terms of reference from our Air Corps colleagues, and we have to write to the Department to see if we can get the information from it that is required to carry out that study. However, we are tired of studies. This was pointed out in 2019.

I am sorry for cutting across Mr. Guinan. I accept that. I also recognise what happened in 2020 during Covid in the context of aircraft maintenance and aircraft technicians. I understand that even if apprentices are well paid and encouraged to join, it is the retention piece. I think it is the retention piece across our services in general. However, it is also my understanding that there are external companies, like Ryanair, coming in. Even though the buyout figure and terms have increased, external companies are coming in, and because our technicians are so well trained, they are even paying the exit fee on behalf of the technicians. Technicians are then walking into an environment that offers them much more flexibility, to go back to the point about family.

What seems to be happening is this. The Defence Forces are very structured, for good reason, but in specialist areas we need to have a mechanism where there can be a little bit more flexibility. I come back to my point about looking at the maintenance piece. I would love to see that report. I would love to see PDFORRA involved in fashioning a report, getting the facts and figures for us and putting that forward as well.

There is a financial cost to maintenance, as the Deputy rightly identifies, but there is also the fact that you are denying the technicians the ability to do that work. They need to be able to undertake work in order to have continuing professional development and be able to experience that type of work on the aircraft. They are not getting that if there is outsourcing. That is another problem. There are a lot of sides to this. It is not just the numbers; it is the impact on morale when the aircraft go off because people cannot do the job. There is the experience of not being able to do the job, as well as the cost, given that people are not being paid appropriately to do the job they are doing. If they go to Ryanair, they are probably working on one or two different types of airframes, whereas the Air Corps has multiple types of airframes. As the Deputy rightly pointed out, these guys are highly skilled. They have a vast range of experience across a range of platforms and airframes. Why would an employer not take them out?

Absolutely. My point is how we are going to move the dial. How are we going to get the change? How can PDFORRA work and support that?

PDFORRA has a very comprehensive claim before council going back a number of years. Again, it comes back to the fact that we have been told we are going to have to use local bargaining as a mechanism to increase the pay.

That is what the Minister for Defence is pushing back against.

Yes. In fairness to the Minister, Deputy McEntee, I know for a fact that she is. However, as much as people are pushing back, there is also pushback from the other side as well - from the Department of public expenditure.

The figures that I have outlined are black and white. If we had a report, or a skills gap analysis or capability gap-----

Can I come in on a point? It strikes me a small bit like Father Ted - is there anything to be said for another report? We have the data. The Deputy has the data.

That is correct.

We have gone through two pay commissions. We have gone through a White Paper and then a second White Paper. We have gone through all these skills and gap analyses, all these traffic light systems and project management systems. We went into a Commission on the Defence Forces. My heart sank in 2022 when I was told by the Secretary General of the Department of Defence that we were going to go into a high-level implementation plan, followed by a high-level action plan, and then we would have a detailed implementation plan by 2023, and maybe in 2026 we might revise that and extend the timelines by two to three years. We are bogged down in the treacle of process all the time, when our skills and capabilities are on life support. When we see the technicians at less than 50% out there, the whole mission is affected. For the want of paying €60 a day before tax to senior officers to fly a maritime patrol, that mission does not fly without those officers. A small amount of money in the right place would fix it. To answer Deputy Stanley’s point, outsourcing is a false economy.

I am going to have to move on, although I have allowed space. As a committee, we have to seek accountability when these things have not been done despite the promises that have been made. What we would look to do is bring the Department of public expenditure and the Department of Defence before the committee to answer some of the questions that have been raised today. I am reluctant to do another report, but I think there is a value in cross-party recommendations being made by this committee on what needs to be actioned immediately. We will do that.

I would like to support the condolences and statements earlier regarding Sergeant Dunne, as mentioned by Senator Craughwell. I thank the witnesses for coming in and for the comprehensive statements from the three organisations. It has certainly been very enlightening and clear as to the challenges they have faced.

My colleagues addressed various issues. In following up on them, there is one that I particularly want to follow up on with the RDFRA. That is to ask both representatives, Mr. Gargan and Mr. Richardson, how many individual members of the Reserve have lost their day job, or have said they think they were passed over for promotion or were subject to negative comments in their day job, purely because of their membership or their activities as part of the Defence Forces Reserve?

This is something I am acutely aware of as a potential hygiene factor for people either seeking to advance their military careers within the Reserve or to join it. Not every employer is well disposed towards Óglaigh na hÉireann. Purely from a financial and risk point of view, a number of years ago - I am not evading the Deputy's question, I will come back to it - we engaged with employer representative organisations and, generally speaking, got a very positive reception. Everything about what we represented and the type of people we are was identified as being an asset to any enterprise or organisation. We were seen as people who were able to get up early in the morning, manage ourselves, take on responsibility and have additional skills which are of value to employers. However, once it got to the point of asking what happens if you get injured on military service or if you are unable to turn up for work for some particular reason, if there is any cost associated to your membership of the RDF that could affect productivity or have the potential for operational issues within your own day job, it was a different matter. The climate suddenly changed quite a bit. Then there were questions about what happens with sick pay, for example, if an injury is sustained. Is the primary employer's sick pay scheme liable to pay for an injury sustained while in the service of the State, for example? These are all questions that arose. Suddenly, we found there was a cooling off in the reception we got. Perhaps, that is understandable.

We brought back all of these points to the Department and pointed out that there was a requirement to address the issue of employment protection. I forget exactly how many years ago we brought this to the Department - and Mr. Richardson might know - but it was almost ten years ago. We pointed out that not only was it complex and difficult but also that there was an enormous volume of work that needed to be done and that this was coming down the road at some point and would need to be addressed in order to provide protection for our members. It is difficult to detect when some adverse treatment has been applied to one of our members in an employment context because we do not actually operate in employment. If they are a member of a trade union, they might be able to escalate it that way. All we have is anecdotal information. Reservists tend to keep their service to themselves on the basis they do not know how it will be received. There is not a positive policy towards it generally on the part of employers. Oddly enough, we find some international and multinational employers, for example, the American multinationals, tend to have policies which tend to be more Reserve-friendly. Then again, we would expect that given the nature of their origin.

I am not trying to evade the question. It is a concern we have. We do not have any specific statistics in relation to that but we do know it is a concern and something that needs to be addressed to fully unlock the potential of all reservists.

Does Mr. Gargan think it might be a barrier to people joining? Is it a potential reason people might shorten their length of service?

It may not be as big an issue for people joining initially. I have seen it with both members and some colleagues in my unit where there have been difficulties with, for example, trying to get time off to do career courses. This is because the way the military operates is if there is a course being done, you do not get to decide when it is happening. If you are lucky enough to get on a particular training course or career course, you are told it will happen over two or three weeks or on particular weekends, for example. That is the way it works. You have to go back to your employer and ask, "May I have this time off?", and if, for whatever reason, the employer says, "Sorry, no, that does not suit me" - and employers have a right to do that - it means you simply cannot do the course. We have lost out on the development of some significant potential for our members. There have been some members of my unit who have suffered due to that because they do not have an automatic right. It is not like other protected types of leave and they cannot say to their employer, "I have given you appropriate notice of it and now I demand my time off." It is not like that at all. For the most part it is annual leave that people are consuming. There are provisions you can rely on if you are working for the State, in the civil or public service, from an old circular from a couple of decades ago, so you can get additional time off. However, for the vast majority of our members who are working in the private sector, it comes entirely from their own leave, which, again, causes other problems. They are at the mercy of an employer who, if they are explaining what it is for when they are going on leave, they are hopeful the employer does not have an issue with that.

Even if people are using their annual leave, it is about getting the specific time off. As Mr. Gargan said, they are constrained to doing a course over two weeks. They either take it or they do not, and there is no protection or requirement on the employer to make a person available for that.

Indeed, and we are mindful of that. Military leadership in the Reserve tries to schedule courses around times like Easter or the standard holiday period towards the end of July and August, and also at the end of October as well, to minimise that effect. It is either side of public holidays. The concern here is that if an employer says "No" you have no recourse and you miss out on the opportunity to train or be developed as a reservist. You can miss out on promotion opportunities, for example.

It seems to be quite significant. Employers are required to make employees available for jury service. This would seem to be equivalent to that.

Absolutely. There are other models. We have proposed looking at this as an addition to the existing grounds for discrimination. It could be something as simple as saying it is unlawful for discriminating for having currently being a member of having been a member of Óglaigh na hÉireann. That would be a great start.

There are other models in relation to protected leave as well. I am old enough to recall that there were various arguments put forward in regard to maternity leave and things of that nature to the effect that it was too costly. If we are trying to develop a Reserve and get the most potential from the general population and encourage people to go into the RDF, the State should be doing everything in its power. It certainly should be doing it in its own backyard. The State is an enormous employer and should adopt policies that are friendly towards service in the reserve and industry will follow suit.

That is a good place to leave it. I thank Mr. Gargan.

I will be brief because most areas have already been covered. I join with colleagues in offering my condolences to the fiancé, family and colleagues of Flight Sergeant Dunne and to our colleague Senator Craughwell on the death of his wife of almost 50 years, Helen.

I welcome the three organisations and thank them for their presentations. They were very balanced. They did acknowledge that progress has been made in certain areas, and that is progress they have all worked towards for many years. I thank them for acknowledging that. I also thank them for highlighting the major difficulties they see at the moment in the Defence Forces. To sum up, it is quite clear there has been a lack of consultation and of engagement with the organisations. This is engagement and consultation they are entitled to under laws that have been passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas and signed off on by the President. I do not think it is acceptable for anybody to not take those laws or the organisations' representations seriously. I want to put that on the record.

I have a small number of questions. In relation to level of ambition, which is at number two under the Commission of the Defence Forces framework from 2022, it was proposed or envisaged that we would reach the level of 11,500 personnel by 2028. Quite obviously, that will not be achieved. In fact, since 2022 when that report was published, we have lost 1,000 members of the Defence Forces. That is just a fact. Now we are told that we will not get to the establishment figure of 9,700 until 2031.

Do all three organisations, in particular PDFORRA and RACO, think this is achievable? Was 11,500 by 2028 ever achievable? Do they think that 9,700 is achievable by 2031?

Of course it was achievable, with the right approach. As I said in an earlier contribution, however, when we go and bog it down in process, report after report and plan after plan and then update a plan and revise the timelines and extend them outwards, then it is not. That is by design, however, not by accident. If we wanted to focus on enhancing the terms and conditions for recruitment and retention, which had to happen, then we had to overcome decades of underinvestment by bringing in enough investment to compensate for the previous lack of investment, which would have been huge. It would have meant significantly increased pay scales and a loosening of the shackles in terms of the payment of allowances, something to make the Defence Forces so attractive that people could not refuse to join and certainly would not want to leave. That did not happen. We had incremental progress over a painstakingly long period that was never actually going to keep pace. Our executive firmly believes that it was the slow, leisurely pace of implementation that hastened the departure of many of our members. Those people just gave up hope that this was going to be solved and that the political will was there for it to be solved. That is why we lost 1,000 people between 2022 and today.

To echo what has been said, we are doing a disservice to the efforts of recruitment all the time by not addressing retention. That is really where we had to come at it. The Defence Forces and everyone else would announce that we were going to induct somewhere between 900 and 1,000 people in a particular year. These are significant numbers. When we consider the strength we are at, we are bringing in 10% of our organisation again. It also means that the centre of gravity that we have within the organisation is training inductees. Not to be disingenuous to inductees, but that is what they are. They bring no capability. We have to train them up. If I am quite honest, it is causing skill fades in other areas because those areas are neglected in terms of training due to the fact that there is such a focus on induction training. By not addressing retention, we think we are announcing numbers. Even within the increase, we should be asking the question as to how we only increased the strength of the organisation by about 200 last year when we took in over 800 people. That is a stark statistic. Recruitment is working to a level, but it is not addressing capability gaps because there is such a timeframe to get people into the skill sets that are required and to get the operational capability output then after that. We are still doing it wrong if we do not address retention.

We have heard about the crisis exodus but it is too late to address it when we reach that time of crisis or near collapse in a service or an output. Then we wonder how quickly we can get it going again. It is similar to what we were talking about earlier with the aircraft technicians. They are under pressure to get aeroplanes back in the air. It is not their fault, but the pressure is coming from the Minister down, and from everyone, because we need this stuff. It is so vital to our security operations. Where is it? Can we get it back out there? To be fair to everyone involved, they are doing their best to do it within these kind of services. The same could be said again: there is no value. People do not feel valued.

Mr. King alluded already to the senior officer situation. They are out on MDSO patrols and search operations and in counter-UAS operations. It is all well vaunted and we are all singing from the rooftops about the EU Presidency and the measures that are put in place. It is awful for us to have to counter that and say, "Well, would we not just pay the senior officers that are doing it a small bit like everyone else that goes out there." As Mr. King said, it is not even the money, it is the principle. The Defence Forces lauds itself on values and talks about them. Rightly so, but we need to feel valued. That is not just down to military management; it is a hugely political and departmental issue too.

Just to summarise that, basically what the witnesses are saying is that if we keep going at the current rate, by 2031 we will have recruited around 1,200 extra people. I thank the witnesses for that.

We could call it the net benefit.

I commend the Reserve Defence Force. I thank the members for the presentation. Given the difficulties Mr. Richardson outlined, roughly, how many per year are coming out?

I will take this one. To double back, the figure of 11,500 personnel for the Defence Forces is inaccurate. It is 16,000, because every single report that ever comes out references 11,500, and that is the permanent staff only. The ceiling is really 16,000. From a Reserve perspective, whenever we see that figure appear in print in an official report, we know we have been forgotten about and our 4,500 ceiling is left out. We are taking in approximately 70 people this year. We are an ageing force. The current strength of the Reserve is 1,600. It is meant to be just over 4,000. We are operating in and around the 30% strength mark.

It is time that we got real about this. These are the figures. We cannot wait until 2031 to realise we have an extra 1,200 in the Permanent Defence Force and an extra 300 in the Reserve. It is ridiculous.

We have a job to do as a committee.

I extend my deepest sympathies to the family of the young flight sergeant in Baldonnel. I was very sorry to hear about his untimely passing. I also echo the condolences to our great colleague Senator Craughwell. He has walked a very difficult pathway in the past number of months. I extend our sincerest sympathies to him.

I thank all the witnesses for being here. I remember a very long time ago I was on hospital guard in Portlaoise for a 24-hour duty and during that 24 hours three different sets of members of An Garda Síochána came to do their eight-hour duty. Each of them got overtime, an out-of-station allowance and expenses. They were also brought hot food, which was delivered to the car park. We had a discussion about it. They worked out that after tax I got paid £12 punts for the 24-hour duty, which was 50 pence an hour. I remember the guards sliding 50 pence coins across the table. We had a great laugh about it. They said that the difference between me and them was that they had representation and that the Defence Forces did not. The role the witnesses play is so important.

I echo what Mr. Ryan said about being feeling valued. I commend all the members of the Defence Forces. From the guard of honour at Áras an Uachtaráin during President Trump's visit, right to the very end when he took off from Shannon, everybody did such a tremendous job. I was not aware that people are being asked to carry out those duties without being paid. As he said, it is a matter of principle. I commend the witnesses. It is so frustrating to hear how the process is weaponised to slow down everything.

In relation to the Reserves, again, many years ago, I remember when it was called the FCA, the Reserve officers were in Magee Barracks in Kildare. As a member of the Permanent Defence Force, we had this immature attitude of "Here come the Reserves". I remember talking to one of the Reserve officers in the early 1990s and he told me that in civilian life he ran a business that was transforming all of the office equipment into something I had probably not heard of, which was digital technology. They were exporting all of this equipment throughout Europe. I remember thinking, "Gosh, what do I have on my CV?" It is such an important human resource. There are tens of thousands of young Irish people who would love to give some sort of public service. I am shocked to hear that it can take 12 to 18 months. That window needs to be much shorter in the case of an 18- or 19-year-old. I would favour the Finnish model for Ireland where the reservists should be expanded for all-of-society resilience to whatever climate change or instability is going to bring us in the coming decades.

I am delighted to hear the responses of my colleagues, particularly those in government, that they will speak to the Minister and raise this at their party meetings. This situation cannot continue. What I hear most strongly is that Defence Forces members' service is taken for granted, particularly within the Air Corps, as Deputy Callaghan pointed out. I do not understand how the Tánaiste, Taoiseach or other Ministers can travel on the Government jet and really look those crew members in the eye knowing the manner in which they are being treated.

I have two brief questions for whoever wants to answer. First, I remember having a conversation with a previous Chief of Staff who is retired. He told me that a very senior Secretary General told him that they did not like people in uniform, that they put up with the Garda because they needed them but, as he said, they did not need the Defence Forces. I was really shocked when the chief told me this. It suggests an institutional or cultural resistance to the idea that our Defence Forces are an essential component and a valid social institution. On all that Mr. King describes, the delays, push-back, hostility and adversarial language that is coming from the Department, is it improving or does it remain the case that there is push-back against uniformed service? Second, what do the witnesses think this committee should prioritise, if they were to have a key ask that we could work on on their behalf?

I think it is a cultural thing in Ireland in respect of Óglaigh na hÉireann. We could go back to 1924 and the Army mutiny, or fast forward to demobilisation or even the Good Friday Agreement and the peace dividend, when people decided there was a cost centre they did not need any more because the Border was safe. Political leadership is required to make the case for defence investment. It should not be for RACO, PDFORRA or the RDFRA to make that case. It should be coming from the top, from Government. It also should be coming from military leadership - from the Chief of Staff - and from the Department of Defence. More often than not, we find the Department of Defence almost does the Department of public expenditure's work for it and acts as the first barrier to investment. That is an opinion of RACO but it is something we see from day to day. We need an advocate, a policy entrepreneur, in respect of moving the dial on defence investment and showing it is not just a matter of war-fighting but national resilience. We talk about a whole-of-society approach. We do not have that in Ireland. We need to educate people about critical national infrastructure and what happens if we do not have the insurance policy that Óglaigh na hÉireann should provide because we under-resource it or pay third-party fire and theft rather than comprehensive insurance, for example, or no insurance at all. T.K. Whitaker once said that Ireland was like an uninsured driver - we do not pay our tax or insurance, and we take a gamble on peace. That was stated and acknowledged Government policy back in 1973, a gamble on peace. It is a cultural and institutional thing that needs to change. That is the first matter.

From my perspective, a key ask would simply be oversight. We have an external oversight body with fantastic people who have really storied careers in the Civil Service, the wider public service and the private sector. On the oversight body, we have the implementation oversight group chair of the Commission on the Defence Forces. That individual wrote a foreword to the updated detailed implementation plan, which fails to acknowledge the fact that all of those projects are kicked down the road for two to three years. The committee has heard what the representatives of RDFRA have said about their projects being pushed out to 2028 from 2022. It boggles the mind.

On the gist of it, looking at the opening statement from the three groups here and the questions from the members, everything is born out of frustration. People who take the chance to wear a uniform and represent their State, defend their State or go overseas peacekeeping do not feel valued. They absolutely do not feel valued for the work they do on behalf of the flag they wear on their left shoulders.

Coming back to what Deputy Callaghan said earlier about value for money for the State in relation to the costings for bringing in private enterprises to maintain aircraft and make sure things can fly, we are losing our ability to do it because of outsourcing. We are not valuing our people. A buzzword term for the Defence Forces at the moment is "value our people." Instead of using a buzzword and asking us to fill out a survey on how we are valued once every 12 months, the Department and military management need to step up, value us and pay people commensurately for the jobs they are doing.

I ask speakers to be brief, as we have already gone over time.

I will be very brief. The Senator asked two questions about issues in respect of the Defences Forces in uniform. Mr. King has mentioned the history. We are all aware of that and where it may have come from, but there is an adverse interpretation of every regulation and the law at every opportunity, which seems to be used against us when we are trying to make progress on industrial relations matters, or just operational fixes. As a representative association, we often go to meetings with the Department and senior military leadership. We are proposing solutions that really reside in the operational domain or very close to it. We should be looking after welfare. That describes just how out of kilter things are.

On the Senator's second question as to what to address and prioritise, we absolutely highlight governance but ask the members to consider the way the processes are being used against us. Everything gets mired in the treacle of process. It is bouncing around in there, nothing is happening and the intent of the committee members as legislators is not finding a foothold, operationally or on the ground with the Defence Forces, because of that.

We need to make sure as a committee that it does find a foothold. The witnesses have raised very specific things here today. We will have the Department of Defence and the Department of public expenditure in here for accountability as to why things have been delayed without any real explanation, and a clear timeline for the implementation on the issues raised. I am sure they will be looking in this morning and will know those issues. They will have time to have specific, not vague, answers to what we need here as a committee.

I apologise that I could not let members in for a second round. I know Deputy Callaghan was dying to get in with one more thing. In the interest of fairness, we have to go into our private session.

On behalf of the committee, I thank all three representative organisations for their time and really valuable engagement this morning. We will now suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to exit, and the committee will then go into our private session as quickly as we can.