Defence Forces
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-17
============================================================

Brendan Smith (FF), Cavan-Monaghan

I thank the Minister for her reply. Again, it is important we recognise there has been stabilisation in the whole defence numbers, with a welcome increase also.
Recent programmes for Government gave a welcome commitment to build on improvements in the recruitment process and, as the Minister rightly referred to, better representation of women at all levels of the Defence Forces. Are there any particular additional measures being proposed this year to implement those commitments?
Some years ago, there was a ludicrous position where people had to leave after 20 years and there was the age limit. Are there any considerations being given to changing the age limit with regard to retirement? When we had a very heavy Army presence in the Cavan-Monaghan area with two barracks, many relatively young people, unfortunately, had to leave the Army because they reached a certain age.

---

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/2026-02-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:38+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-17