Defence Forces
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-07
============================================================

Darren O'Rourke (SF), Meath East

The Minister has acknowledged that recruitment is a challenge and will be a challenge until 2028. I hope she will acknowledge that retention is also an issue. Defence Force members in County Meath, the Minister's constituency and mine, raise with me the issues of breaches of the working time directive and recognition, respect and fair pay for our Defence Forces and for the overtime they do. Does the Minister recognise that is a contributing factor in terms of the recruitment and the retention of Defence Force members? How will she address that?

---

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/2026-05-07/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-07