I agree with the Deputy about recruitment and retention. We can have all the investment plans, and we need to in the Defence Forces, but the men and women in the Defence Forces constitute its most important resource. Given that this is a country with full employment and very skilled individuals work in the Defence Forces, how we recruit in the first instance and then crucially retain them is a very fair question raised by the Deputy. My Department has one service commitment scheme in place in respect of Air Corps pilots and these matters are always kept under review. Recruitment and retention of Defence Forces personnel is, and must be, a Government priority. There are challenges with recruitment and retention in the Defence Forces with particular challenges relating to specialist personnel. Our focus has been on ensuring that existing recruitment and retention frameworks are fully optimised and are responsive to the needs of the Defence Forces while at the same time introducing a number of new initiatives in this space. While there is always more to do, there has been significant progress on a range of fronts, including pay, in recent years. Recruit pay on completion of training, which takes approximately 24 weeks, starts at €41,465 in year one rising to €42,875 in year two and €44,176 in year three. For officers, as of 1 March 2025, a school leaver cadet on commissioning is now paid €45,341, which is a second lieutenant position. In 2019, a school leaver cadet on commissioning was paid €30,884 so there has been quite a significant increase. In the past five years a cadet's pay on commissioning has increased by €14,457, or by 49%. Furthermore, after two years, they are promoted to lieutenant and their pay rises to €50,677. I say this because I am not sure whether these changes are fully known. There might be people watching and following this debate and we want to make it clear to them that pay issues in the Defence Forces have changed in recent years. Of course, there is more to do and I will come back on this in a moment. Other developments include the extension of private secondary health care to enlisted ranks, the restructuring of the patrol duty allowance paid to the Naval Service to encourage seagoing activities, a technical pay 2-6 review completed and implemented that is targeted at specialist and technical personnel and developments relating to the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997.
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We are not.
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I was not talking about fighter jets but was asked about a question about them at an Army barracks. I said I want to get to level of ambition, LAO, 3, which talks about that degree of air cover. We need a better understanding of what happens and the capabilities in our skies and seas. The Deputy is right that the key to being able to activate any of this is having the personnel to operate any such infrastructural capabilities, and we can debate the merits or demerits of each of those. I am not saying this is what he is saying, but it is not fair to completely decouple pay from considerations of retention. If pay is very low, personnel are not going to be retained in an organisation. The changes in pay are helpful. The extension of private secondary healthcare, restructuring of the patrol duty allowance and the extensive training and education opportunities that now exist in the Defence Forces, which are possibly unrivalled in many parts of the public service, are also helpful. Increasing the mandatory retirement age to 62 is a retention measure and increasing the maximum recruitment age to 39 also brings people in. The Deputy asked if I will consider the introduction of service commitment schemes to retain key specialist functions. My answer is that we already have one and I keep under review whether we need to do more in respect of particular specialties that we want to retain in the Defence Forces.
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That is correct.
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Let me be clear that I do not rule out what he has suggested. I am not in any way naive. While I can point to figures that show marginal improvements in the numbers of Defence Forces personnel, I am also aware we are nowhere near the established numbers we need. That marginal improvement provides a degree of false comfort in some of the specialties where we need to continue to recruit and, crucially, as the Deputy said, retain in the Defence Forces. As he referenced, there is the new service commitment scheme. I am always open to exploring options to continue to drive recruitment and, particularly, retention. I am open to receiving and considering any proposed initiatives and carefully assessing them against operational requirements. They need to work within broader pay policy. There is a broader issue about pay policy. We often talk about issues at a macro level. Within many organisations in the public service, and the Defence Forces is no different, there are particular pinch points in respect of a group of people or skills. There does not necessarily need to be a contagion effect so we see that spreading across all elements of the public service. How we tease through these issues is complex but important.
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I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. When we look back at the Commission on the Defence Forces and everything else, radar and sonar are two key areas on which we must move. The Deputy and I can largely agree on that point. These are no-brainers. We must have a better understanding of what happens in our skies and seas. We need that capability. It is a key priority for me to ensure that the operational capacity of the Defence Forces is maintained and developed in line with the decision the Government has already made to move to level of ambition 2, as defined by the Commission on the Defence Forces, by 2028. The commitment in the programme for Government states that when we have arrived at LAO 2, we will move to level of ambition 3. The commission recommended the development of a primary radar capability to ensure that Ireland can maintain a complete recognised air picture, and that this should be a top priority. The commission also advised that in the absence of a complete recognised air picture, there are vulnerabilities which need to be addressed for various reasons, including the protection of our national sovereignty in the air for the purposes of civil aviation safety and the maintenance of co-operative relations with neighbouring states, which are also impacted by this capability gap. On foot of this, a project team comprising senior civil and military personnel was established to progress a military radar programme. This programme of work is ongoing and I am pleased that good progress has been made. There are three elements to the military radar programme: land-based long range primary radar; ground-based air defence systems, to include a counter-unmanned aerial systems capability; and maritime or ship-borne radar. When fully addressed, the recognised air picture will incorporate this suite of military radar systems, which will have the capability to detect all aircraft traversing our airspace, including any that may be operating with their transponders turned off. Full delivery of the programme will be complex but will be fully rolled out by 2028. That roll-out will start in 2026, which is sometimes missed in the discourse. In each month and quarter from 2026 onwards, we will start to see progress and the roll-out will be fully completed by the end of 2028. I will go back to Cabinet later this year with the recommendation so we can press "Go" for the roll-out in early 2026.
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I fully agree with the Deputy. I like, and will cog, the phrase "positive neutrality". That is what we should be talking about. I certainly have no plans to change Ireland's military neutrality. There is an overwhelming consensus in this House and significant support across the country for military neutrality. We should be proud of our neutrality. It is not just a cornerstone of our Defence Forces policy but also our foreign affairs policy. We need that vision of positive neutrality. There are many neutral nations that spend a lot more on their own security. In fact, one could argue that being neutral places a greater obligation on a country in light of its need to invest in its own national security because it is not a part of a military alliance and should not be able to rely on others to come to its aid. This is in the national security space. Perhaps a benefit, if there is one, of being one of the last in Europe to get this right is that we have access to the best information about what modern, fit-for-purpose radar systems look like. The Government has taken a decision to work government to government on procurement. That will involve the delivery of modern fit-for-purpose capabilities in this space.
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We certainly do not and there is no proposal to join NATO or anything like it. I value military neutrality. Understanding and debating what it means, though, is very useful. It means being militarily unaligned but one can be militarily unaligned and still take national security and defence seriously. I accept there are very different views in the House on the terms, conditions and parameters on which we decide to deploy personnel abroad for peacekeeping. The Deputy is right that we have to get to a point. We are about to set up an Oireachtas committee on national security and I really welcome that. The Deputy's party leader, Deputy Bacik, makes the point - and I agree fully - that we need a much greater and more honest exchange among Government and Opposition. We do not talk about it enough. We should be able to have informed conversations that do not simply run into an alleyway because all we talk about is neutrality. We may all have different views but we all agree on military neutrality. I certainly agree military neutrality is important but we should enable ourselves to have the space to talk about it. We are militarily neutral but what do we need to do to give the men and women of Óglaigh na hÉireann the equipment they need to keep this country safe and to have access to good information? We know about the shadow fleet. If, God forbid, anything ever went wrong, the Deputy would be asking me much more difficult questions on why we did not go down this route.
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Are the Deputies happy to do them in this order?
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So we will do this and come back. Is that okay?
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 155 and 156 together. I thank Deputies Gibney and Ó Laoghaire for raising this important matter. I accept we approach this from very different points of view. I do not doubt the Deputies' bona fides on this and ask that they do not doubt mine. I value military neutrality. I am not proposing Ireland joins any military alliances; I am proposing that the triple lock in its current form poses challenges and should change. We will have an opportunity to tease through legislation and vote accordingly. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this question. I know the questions are grouped but Question No. 155 refers to the roles of the UN General Assembly and Security Council. Since 1958, Ireland has contributed to a range of UN missions across the world. I recently had the honour to visit our troops stationed in Lebanon and saw first-hand the vital role they are playing with UNIFIL, where many thousands of Irish soldiers have been deployed over a number of decades. The UN Charter unequivocally sets out the primacy of the UN Security Council with regard to all matters relating to international peace and security. In practice, peacekeeping missions are only ever deployed on the basis of mandates from the UN Security Council. Under the charter, it is the Security Council alone that holds the power to take decisions that member states are obligated to implement. The UN General Assembly cannot compel a peacekeeping operation. That remains the province of the Security Council. In certain instances, where a matter has been considered by the Security Council and has been the subject of a veto, the General Assembly may consider the matter and make a recommendation to UN members for collective action. The term "recommendation" is key here, however, with a recommendation being devoid of any binding legal force. UN General Assembly resolutions cannot compel action, therefore. Only once in history has the UN General Assembly invoked the "uniting for peace" resolution and recommended a peacekeeping operation. This happened nearly 70 years ago, when it established the first UN emergency force in the Middle East in 1956, which proceeded with the consent of the parties involved. I have a lot more to say on this but we will have to go back and forth.
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Can I ask a question back? Does the Deputy accept there are countries in the world which are absolutely neutral militarily and there is no question of it, and which do not deploy a triple lock mechanism for their decisions around peacekeeping? I genuinely do not believe the issues should be conflated. There are a number of examples. The European Union peace operation in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia did not have a UN Security Council mandate and Ireland was unable to participate in that mission despite wanting to do so. In 1999, a permanent member of the UN Security Council vetoed the renewal of the United Nations preventative deployment force. The EU security mission in the Mediterranean - the then Operation Sophia - did eventually get a UN mandate until 2016 but Ireland could not consider contributing to the mission for quite a period because that mandate was not in place. Let us take a very real one. I was in Lebanon recently. I also met the men and women in Renmore barracks who are about to go out to Lebanon. What would we do - this is up for renewal this year - if any member of the UN Security Council decided for budgetary or other reasons not to renew the mandate? There is not a person in Ireland who wants us to end the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. I am not saying we are. We are very committed to it but, hypothetically, if that happened this year, if I was standing here taking questions and a permanent member of the Security Council had vetoed renewal of the mandate, would the Deputy want me to bring the troops home from Lebanon? That is what I would have to do.
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We are not doing that. Any missions we participate in will have to be in line with the values of the UN Charter. In fairness to everybody in this House, we are having this debate before we all have a chance to scrutinise the legislation, and I accept that reality. I am looking forward to getting to tease it out line by line so we can all understand what we are being asked or not asked to do.
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The timeline is “very shortly”, that is, I expect I will be in a position to publish it this month. Certainly, it will be published very shortly, but in and around that time. I have a difference of view to Deputy Ó Laoghaire on this. I think people in Ireland do differentiate between military neutrality and the triple lock. I know politicians do not pay any attention to polls, definitely not, but if they did, they would know there is a significant gap between the number of people who absolutely support military neutrality and the number open to hearing how we change how we deploy our peacekeeping troops. In many ways, much of society is ahead of where this debate is. The Deputy asked me for a simple example or to name an opportunity where Ireland wanted to participate in a peacekeeping operation and could not because of the lack of a UN mandate.
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A specific example of where we wanted to participate was the European Union peace operation in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. When the European Union wants to deploy peacekeepers and the Irish Government and the Dáil want to deploy peacekeepers, I do not think it is up to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or, frankly, anybody else to decide whether we can do that.
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I thank the Deputy for raising the matter and for constructively discussing it with me at the last parliamentary questions session on defence matters. I have had engagement with my officials to try to tease through some of this since we last discussed this. As I set out on the last occasion this was raised in the House, and I feel obliged to repeat now, any discussion we have or certainly any comments that I make are necessarily restricted by the existence of ongoing litigation that is active before the courts. I want to see a resolution in this regard. I am advised there is currently active engagement between the State Claims Agency and litigants to determine if mutually agreeable resolutions can be found to their cases. I want to see that happen and I encourage the State Claims Agency to continue that approach, as I know it will. Trying to bring this issue to a resolution that works is important. The ultimate priority for me and for the Defence Forces is the protection of the health and well-being of members of the Defence Forces in carrying out its essential service to the State. It is also important to me that, where possible, litigation of this nature can be concluded on reasonable terms agreeable to all parties to spare people having to take other routes. In the event that this cannot be achieved, the matter will fall to be determined by the courts but, again, I need to remain fully cognisant of my own position in that litigation. It would be valuable in the engagement process that is now genuinely under way that it be allowed the opportunity to proceed without prejudice, and to see if we can get to a point where there is an achievable outcome that is acceptable to all parties. The question of alleged or potential historic exposure to chemicals in the Air Corps is a matter of considerable importance to me and I maintain an open mind in terms of future discussions and engagement. I have made the point that, in the past, there have been other areas where even if the State did not accept liability, people did try to meet the health needs of those impacted. I have asked that my officials continue to give thought to that issue and to keep me updated on the progress in relation to the State Claims Agency engagement and those further questions that I have asked it. I am saying in the Dáil today that I would like time to be given to that process of engagement that I genuinely believe is now under way.
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Maybe I was not clear but I thought I was saying something similar. There is a process ongoing in relation to the State Claims Agency trying to see if the legal cases can be resolved in a way that is to the satisfaction of both parties. In addition to that, I have also asked my officials, on the basis of the last exchange we had, to give consideration to other actions we may be able to take to try to meet the health needs of people. That is the point I am making. There is an engagement process under way now between the State Claims Agency, which has a delegated function from me, so it acts on behalf of the State and the Government, to see if we can get this to a position where those who have been impacted are satisfied and the State is satisfied too. All I am suggesting today, and I am constraining myself in not wanting to say anything unhelpful or that cuts across that process, is that I want to give it a little bit of time. I am happy to engage constructively on it and I have asked my officials to continue to think further on some of the points I have made to them, many of which have been influenced by the points made to me by the Deputy in this House some six weeks ago.
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I thank Deputy Ó Laoghaire. The differentiation he has made between the two processes is useful. The point he is making to me is that a number of people are not involved in legal proceedings, and they never wish to be involved in legal proceedings for whatever reason, but there are health issues that either have impacted them or are impacting them and their families have concerns about this, and there is a need to examine the health cause and effect, for want of a phrase, and to examine what other jurisdictions have done. This is something I will undertake to do, and I will come back to Deputy Ó Laoghaire on it. I expect he will be asking me about this again.
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