Defence Forces
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-16
============================================================

Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East

On the evaluation of the Commission on the Defence Forces recommendations, a number of factors have to be taken into consideration before a decision can be made. These include military management advice on the introduction of the rank, the potential benefits to individual personnel, the future role of personnel at this new rank, the impact on career progression for personnel, the impact of increasingly hierarchical structures, and the legislative and financial implications, which may not be to the fore. The report noted that this rank exists in a number of other militaries, specifically those of the UK and the US. It is provided between the ranks of private three star and corporal. All of these different situations and scenarios need to be taken into consideration before this is taken on board. I believe the main reason for this ask is that it would give privates the opportunity to do a shorter course but all of this has to be looked at in the overall context of force design. There is a lot of work under way as part of general force design. This is very much part of that overall review. Decisions will be taken in the new year as to whether we will move on this.

---

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