Defence Forces Dail Éireann — 2025-12-16 ============================================================ Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East Yes, I intend to meet them in the new year and really look forward to meeting them. I also had an opportunity to meet and speak with cadets who were quite literally mid-training when I was in the Curragh last week. There were some who had completely changed their career paths because they were passionate about joining the Defence Forces. There were others whose siblings had been members as well and they wanted to join. It was wonderful to see the commitment and the fact that they were there because it was something they were passionate about. I appreciate that the entry point for cadets in training is lower. They receive board and food. That is a cost that is taken away from them. It depends on the different cadetships; they are anywhere from 15 to 18 months long. Some may take longer, so there are implications more broadly. The process that is engaged in at the moment is an important step to try to make progress where we can specifically in relation to this level of pay scale. The overall improvements we have seen over the years have come about because of the need and commitment to invest in the men and women as they are training, but also as they rise through the ranks. I am committed to making further progress on that where we can and to working closely with the organisations and representative groups. They are now part of ICTU. With the public sector pay agreements, it gives the Defence Forces an opportunity to make sure that they are now represented at the table. That is a welcome development in recent years. --- 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/2025-12-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-16