Defence Forces Strength Dail Éireann — 2020-11-17 ============================================================ Éamon Ó Cuív (FF), Galway West I thank the Minister for his comprehensive answer. Perhaps he could outline for me when this divergence started taking place between the establishment strength of the Defence Forces and the position we find ourselves in today whereby we are 10% down in each service. What steps were taken once it became apparent that there was a difficulty retaining and recruiting people to the Defence Forces? What steps were taken once that divergence became apparent? It seems to me that this is a long-standing problem and that everything is always in the future rather than actually dealing with the issue and getting results. --- 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/2020-11-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:47+00:00 Sitting date: 2020-11-17