Defence Forces Dail Éireann — 2024-10-17 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central There have been 443 discharges, which is fewer than last year. This year could be a turning point in the recruitment story. We hope that in respect of the retention issue, successfully raising the retirement age to 62 will have a significant effect next year and in the following year. Moreover, there are other measures we want to introduce, relating to instructors and so forth, that will have a beneficial impact. We have forced this pace, changed the modalities of recruitment and introduced significant incentives, as I outlined, such as private secondary healthcare, the patrol duty allowance and the extension of the naval tax credit. --- 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/dail/2024-10-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:22+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-10-17