Defence (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2024-07-03 ============================================================ Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel I thank the Minister. We find ourselves in a situation where he is promising legislation coming down the line that is going to fix all these things. He is correct in what he says but he may not be in power long enough to bring that legislation forward. Legislation takes a long time to draft. Who knows, but the coalition parties might come back in September and decide they are heading to the high road, and where will the legislation be then? The amendment we have been talking about puts in place a command structure through this Bill. How often does the Minister meet the Chief of Staff on a one-to-one basis, just the two of them, for defence briefings? Having a command structure is also about briefing the civilian side, and that is the Minister. How often does he meet the Chief of Staff for those briefings? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2024-07-03/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-07-03