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.
