Defence Forces
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-13
============================================================

Séamus McGrath (FF), Cork South-Central

I thank the Minister of State for outlining the facts. To reiterate, the increase in personnel in the Defence Forces is very welcome, with 780 inductions in 2025. That brought an overall net increase of 200 in the Defence Forces complement, which is welcome. The intention to have 850 inductions this year is also very welcome.
However, I repeat what I said earlier about the importance of having a fair and user-friendly application process in place. When you look at the stages of that process outlined in the reply, from the shortlisting to the psychometric testing and so on, it appears as if it is reasonable up to the point of the vetting. It takes maybe three months to get to the point of vetting and, from there on, there can be a delay of anything up to nine months. That is the area on which I ask for some focus. Of course, I understand the importance of vetting, but I do not see why it should take nine months to carry out that vetting process. I accept that nine months is at the upper end but, at the same time, that is probably the period where people feel the process is letting them down and where they are not receiving any communication, updates or contact.
People have alternatives in life. Thankfully, we are a country with high standards of education and people have alternative careers; we have a strong economy. If we genuinely want to encourage people into our Defence Forces, we have to have a system in place that works for them, is user-friendly and efficient and brings them from the point of application to the point of induction as quickly as possible. We all know the importance of ensuring we meet our targets, as a Government, in increasing the number personnel.
The issue of vetting in particular is one that needs to be reviewed, and I ask the Minister of State to convey that message back to the Minister for Defence, Deputy McEntee.

---

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/2026-05-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-13