Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on\nDefence, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has called on the Minister for Defence, Paul Kehoe, to\ndeal with the recruitment and retention crisis with the urgency that it\ndeserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking after he raised the issue\nwith the Minister in the D\u00e1il, Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are currently seeing a huge exodus of personnel from the Defence Forces. <\/p>
\u201cRecruitment and retention have been all but impossible due to government inaction, poor pay, and cut after cut to allowances that Defence Forces members rely on to make a living.<\/p>
\u201cIt is also because of the extremely poor working conditions faced by the Defence Forces due to government neglect, which includes a serious lack of appropriate accommodation. <\/p>
\u201cThe Defence Forces have a designated strength of 9,500 but currently there are now only 8,653 personnel.\u00a0 <\/p>
\u201cThis is a full-blown recruitment and retention crisis and morale is on the floor.<\/p>
\u201cThis crisis was created by successive Fine Gael governments and with the support of Fianna F\u00e1il for the last three and half years. <\/p>
\u201cThis crisis is undermining the work of the Defence Forces and the security of the State. In 2019 to date 558 members of the Defence Forces have left and the current turnover rate is over 10%.<\/p>
\u201cSmall increases in pay and allowances won\u2019t be enough to stem the degradation of Defence Forces numbers and capabilities.<\/p>
\u201cMinister Kehoe needs to get serious about this massive crisis. He needs to urgently deal with the core pay issue and put in place radical and innovative measures backed by significant investment.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Defence, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has called on the Minister for Defence, Paul Kehoe, to deal with the recruitment and retention crisis with the urgency that it deserves. Speaking after he raised the issue with the Minister in the D\u00e1il, Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said: \u201cWe are currently seeing a huge exodus of personnel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,167,164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defence","category-defence-forces","category-pay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3939,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3938\/revisions\/3939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}