Leaving the Army: ‘No other uniformed service would put up with this abuse’ Low pay, poor morale and micromanagement forced Cathal Berry from Army
“I’m not leaving because I hate the Army. I’m leaving because I love it. I can’t just sit back anymore and watch the Defence Forces being completely dismantled and demoralised before my eyes.
“As a uniformed officer you’re not permitted to engage with the media, but as a private citizen nobody can gag or muzzle me now. The public and the Dáil need to know what’s going on here.”
Proposed increases in allowances for members of the Defence Forces could make the retention and recruitment crisis worse, not better, it has been warned.
Sad facts being married members of the Defence force are having to get their wages topped up via Supplementary Welfare Payments in order just to exist yet the Department of Defence returned 92 million Euros to the Irish Exchequer -
Irish Department of Defence is a total failure at its job, there is not even a single Minister of Defence but a so-called "Minister with Responsibility for Defence," named Paul Kehoe TD
There are critical shortages of officers in all sections of the Defence Forces, forcing junior officers to act up and becoming overstressed, while others are often "double and treble-jobbing" to cover the gaps.
www.irishexaminer.com
Ironically with regards officers, the ratio of officers to men now is back at the pre 1996/7 point, where a Price-Waterhouse report found the DF to be top heavy in officers, and recommend many be put out to pasture, there has been an embargo on Other-Rank promotions, yet no similar restriction was placed on officer or officer recruiting as I recall.
"Junior officers in the naval service were regularly ‘acting down’ to fulfill duties normally carried out by ordinary and able seamen due to staff shortages months before two vessels were docked due to staff shortages."
Junior officers in the naval service were regularly ‘acting down’ to fulfill duties normally carried out by ordinary and able seamen due to staff shortages months before two vessels were docked due to staff shortages.
I'm shocked, but not surprised given the current composition of Ireland's government.
Interestingly, Austria's army seems to be in a strikingly similar state of malaise. Of all the neutral nations of the world only Japan and, to some extent, Switzerland seem to maintain a decent level of defence.
All four Naval Service Reserve (NSR) motor launches have been decommissioned due to their age, while the strength of the back-up force has significantly decreased and is desperately short of young people.
@Connaught Ranger, could you give us your assessment where the Examiner and the Journal stand, politically? Both have written some damning pieces on the state of the Irish Defence Forces, even though they otherwise seem to be in favour of the sitting government. I try to reconcile both impressions here.
On a related note, I found it hilariously evil of Leo Varadkar to suggest PDForra would try to drive a "wedge" between the military and the civil servants of other branches of the executive by demanding better pay.
Not only are Irish soldiers apparently at the bottom of the food chain already, so the wedge has already been driven in; what is more, theirs is not a job like any other. There is no compelling reason as to why someone who puts their life on the line for the state shouldn't be given at least the same or even preferrential treatment over some mom who works in the motor vehicle registration office.
UAE firm breached UN arms embargo over decommissioned ship, Security Council told
www.irishtimes.com
The former Irish Naval Service patrol ship, the LÉ Aisling, was sold to one of the participants in the civil war in Libya last year in breach of a UN arms embargo, the UN Security Council has been told.
The embargo was breached by a company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), about a year after the decommissioned vessel was sold by the State to a Dutch shipping broker, according to a UN report.
The State sold the offshore patrol vessel for €110,000 to the Dutch company. The Dutch company sold it a year later, for $525,000 (€473,000), to the company in the UAE, which almost immediately sold it to a company in Libya for $1.5 million (€1.3 million).
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