However, all the advice we are getting at the moment suggests there is no appetite in the Kremlin at this time for a peaceful outcome in the short term in the form of a ceasefire.

I wish we could use our voice to bring about a ceasefire and peace. However, anybody who looks at Russia's actions will see it has sent a signal to western leaders meeting this week by way of the brutality of what it did yesterday. This is not a country that is seeking peace. It is a country that is seeking to dominate its neighbour and bring Ukraine back into the Russian sphere of influence. That is what is happening. I wish it were not but Russia is deliberately undermining the very infrastructure of peace and st…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 75 and 81 together. I accepted the recommendation of the working group on decommissioning, dated December 2021, that the decommissioning and disposal of three Naval Service ships, namely, the LÉ Eithne , P31, the LÉ Orla , P41, and the LÉ Ciara , P42, should be progressed as soon as is practicable, taking into account resourcing and the current impact of maintaining the ships.  Officials in my Department are examining options on how to dispose of the ships post decommissioning in th…

What happened with Malta in the past was that there was a comment that got quite a lot of media coverage, but that vessel became the flagship for the Maltese Navy for several years afterwards. The transfer was very successful. It is important to say this. The ship had quite a number of extra years of life and it was very useful at the time to the Maltese. They were very thankful for it. We have a close relationship with the Armed Forces of Malta in the context of joint training programmes, etc. Several options for …

There has been no expression of interest from the Ukraine Government in terms of a government-to-government transfer of these vessels between Ireland and Ukraine. It simply has not come up. There has been an expression of interest from elsewhere, which we are looking at, but there is no final decision yet. If we were to share those vessels with Ukraine, I do not think it would undermine Irish neutrality. These are not war-going vessels in reality; they are patrol vessels. I do not believe that issue will likely ari…

That is a very good question. I am advised by the military authorities that there is an ongoing programme of HR development within the Defence Forces, part of which is aimed at ensuring that, where at all possible, there is an appropriate work-life balance for its members. The Defence Forces have piloted new work-life balance initiatives, including reviewing how career courses are conducted to make them more accessible to those with family commitments and facilitating job sharing for overseas deployments. In this r…

Honestly, we are looking at all of these matters. One of the possibilities for the next few years, on the back of the commission report, is that we will see a radical restructuring of the Defence Forces, in particular the Army. We will see a new Army headquarters, a new defence headquarters, a new structure headed up by a chief of defence for the first time in Ireland. Senior decision makers in the Defence Forces will be civilians, such as head of transformation and head of HR management. The commission has set ver…

As for accommodation, if there are people sleeping in their cars, I would like to hear the details of that. I have heard people say that before and I always ask for the details but I have not got them yet. It may have happened. I do not know. If it is happening, it should not be and we should be addressing it. We are investing a lot of badly needed money in accommodation in various barracks. Some of the accommodation is not good enough; some of the new accommodation is really good. It is about upgrading all our bar…

I would love to give Deputy Ó Cuív a load of detail on that but I probably owe it to my Cabinet colleagues to tell them first. All I can say to him is that I have given a commitment to bring to the Government recommendations from the commission report in the month of June. We are at the end of June now, so that will be done very shortly - next week, I hope. If, however, we cannot get agreement next week, it will be the following week, but I hope to be able to do this shortly. There has been an enormous amount of wo…

As for the consultation on this, I have been to virtually every barracks in the country and have asked the Defence Forces to put a balanced selection of people into a room with me. I have taken questions for a couple of hours in most cases. That includes Donegal, Galway, Cork, Athlone, Dublin and the Curragh. We have met as many Defence Forces personnel as we possibly can to explain to them what we are trying to do, the rationale for upsizing significantly, not downsizing or rationalising, the Defence Forces in the…

"Yes" is the straight answer to that question. I hope that that will happen well in advance of our breaking up in a few weeks' time. I do not believe that it is either justifiable or necessary for the Defence Forces to have the presence they have in Portlaoise Prison indefinitely. My view is that the Defence Forces should be phased out of Portlaoise Prison but, of course, we have to work with the Department of Justice and the Prison Service to do that efficiently. If we are trying to narrow the scope of what we are…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 78 and 79 together. There will be a new cyber command within new Defence Force structures. That will report into the Defence Forces headquarters, which will be headed up by what is called a CHOD, which is a military term for a chief of defence. We envisage that the cyber role of the Defence Forces will be increasingly important in security terms. People do not need me to remind them how vulnerable every country is to cyberattacks, including this one. In the middle of a pandemic, we …

More generally on the wage issue, let us not forget that the Defence Forces are part of the public sector pay negotiation. Both PDFORRA, which has been campaigning on this issue for years, and the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers, RACO, asked me to facilitate the associate membership of their organisations in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, for the purposes of this round of pay negotiations and we have done that, which is a first. If the Defence Forces' representative bodies are part of…

Yes, but it will have to change within public sector pay policy. That is not to say that we cannot strategically use allowances within the Defence Forces in a way that perhaps gets better outcomes and the commission makes some recommendations in that regard. Undoubtedly, we have to find a way of ensuring that we have a sufficient number of specialists, particularly in the cybersecurity space, but there are other specialist areas also around engineering, navigation and various other types of engineering specialties …

I propose to take Questions Nos. 80 and 108 together. My Department, along with the Defence Forces and the Civil Defence, has been working across Government to provide a range of supports in response to the Ukrainian crisis. Following a direct request from Ukraine, the Defence Forces has provided approximately 10 tonnes or 5,000 units of ready-to-eat meals and 200 units of body armour which have been shipped from Defence Forces stocks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.  The contribution of the ready-to-eat meals and b…

We want to do more but where we can do more is where Ireland has skill sets and credibility. I referred to training programmes earlier. There has been a specific request for training on demining. This is something in which the Irish Defence Force has specific expertise. We have been involved in demining training programmes in Afghanistan and Mali. This is something we should pursue. I was very involved in finalising the wording of the European Peace Facility. We got agreement on including in the programme for Gover…

The Government has been very clear in its response to the British Government's decision to introduce legislation which, if enacted, would disapply core elements of the protocol on Northern Ireland and breach international law. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and I, along with all other Ministers, have expressed our deep disappointment and concern at the British approach. Far from fixing anything, the UK Government's legislation would create a whole new set of uncertainties and damage relationships within Northern Irela…

I want to use this opportunity to try to speak directly to the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. I want to say to them that we in the Irish Government and, I can assure them, in the EU also, within the European Commission, want to respond to their legitimate concerns in regard to how the protocol is implemented and the need to make a clear distinction between goods that are staying within the United Kingdom, travelling from Great Britain into Northern Ireland and being purchased and consumed there. I believe …

It is important to call out what is happening in an open and blunt way. The approach towards political stability and maintaining that in Northern Ireland post the Good Friday agreement, for nearly 25 years now, has been based on partnership and trust between the British and Irish Governments, when it was needed, to provide a platform and a foundation to help the parties agree to compromise positions on awkward issues and find a way forward. That partnership is absent right now and has been for quite some time. We h…

There is no criminal court case. I do not know what Deputy Tóibín is talking about.