At the end of 2015, the Defence Forces had 9,140 personnel. Now it has less than 7,600 and, according to a panel of military experts from Ireland and other countries, it needs a minimum of 11,500 people to keep security operations going both at home and abroad. File picture: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie
Demands for better pay, allowances, and conditions will dominate a three-day military representative association’s conference which gets under way on Tuesday.
The PDForra conference will also discuss the urgent need to address "failed recruitment and retention policies" which have decimated the ranks across the army and air corps, but particularly the naval service.
Sources say it will be "groundhog day" for delegates attending the conference as, for more than a decade, they have predicted a meltdown in Defence Forces numbers due to poor pay and conditions.
However, little has been done by successive governments to remedy this.
At the end of 2015, the Defence Forces had 9,140 personnel. Now it has less than 7,600 and, according to a panel of military experts from Ireland and other countries, it needs a minimum of 11,500 people to keep security operations going both at home and abroad.
This benchmark figure has been agreed by the Government, but, on a daily basis, numbers are falling due to compulsory retirements, those quitting to seek better pay and conditions in the private sector, and recruitment being reduced to a trickle.
In total 55 motions will be discussed by 120 delegates, who represent enlisted personnel in the Defence Forces, at the conference at the Knightsbrook Hotel in Trim, Co Meath.
Many of the motions will focus on seeking better pay and allowances for specialised technicians whose skill sets are being headhunted by private companies willing to pay them more and offer a better work/life balance than they have in the country’s military.
One motion will call on the Department of Defence and military management to act on their long-promised implementation of the EU Working Time Directive (WTD) across the military forces.
Delegates will say they recognise military life requires a major commitment to the security of the State, but will insist they are being taken advantage of by having to plug gaps due to decreasing personnel numbers. They want the WTD to be introduced to provide personnel and their families with a proper work/life balance.
The need to address the personnel crisis in the naval service will be one of the big issues at the conference. It is so short of crews that it reached meltdown status over Easter when none of its four operational ships was able to go to sea because it didn’t have the personnel.
Navy delegates will call for increased pay and allowances to make it more attractive for young people to join the force.
Another motion will highlight the exodus of personnel resulting in those left having to do other people’s jobs as well as their own.
This is most acute in the navy, where the lack of adequate numbers is at crisis levels, but PDForra will say that double and treble-jobbing is happening right across the Defence Forces.
Tánaiste and Defence Minister Micheál Martin will address the conference on Tuesday along with the Defence Forces chief of staff, Lieutenant General Sean Clancy. They in turn will be addressed by PDForra general secretary Gerard Guinan and association president Mark Keane.