I should like to join in congratulating the Minister on his appointment as Minister for Defence but I must temper my congratulations by repeating the criticism of his speech in Edenderry. It was intemperate and unfortunate. As Deputy Treacy said, it could be taken to prejudice the neutrality we want to be seen to hold so dear, but in addition I am afraid it has had a very deleterious effect on our relations with the other island. This will have direct consequences for the tourist trade this year and I think those consequences have been felt already if we can believe reports from Bord Fáilte. I am sure it was a once-off speech by the Minister, and some of the consequences have been undone by the Taoiseach disowning the speech and by Deputy O'Malley's rejection of it yesterday. I am afraid that has to be said. Ministerial office brings with it responsibilities of care and discretion, and they were breached on that occasion. It would be unfortunate if the civilian head of our Defence Forces gave the impression that our Defence Forces are susceptible to the disease of Brit-bashing which occasionally breaks out here, particularly on the other side of the House.
It would appear from the contributions that have been made that in administering this Estimate the Minister should not have any problems about the adequacy of the funds available to him. The Estimate is designed to provide funds for the Minister which, with the normal careful management that is expected in regard to these funds, would enable him comfortably to discharge his obligations and enable his Department to fulfil its role. I do not have to remind the House that the Estimate which the Minister is introducing is the Estimate that was decided upon by the last Coalition Government. The Minister finds himself in a much happier position in relation to that part of his duty, in relation to administering the funds that will be available to his Department, than his predecessor Deputy Barrett found himself in this time last year when he had to deal with an Estimate which seriously under-provided for the needs of his Department. As Deputy Treacy has reminded us, Deputy Tully had to introduce a Supplementary Estimate for a very considerable sum, over £20 million, to make up the shortfall in the original provision. But Deputy Tully's experience and Deputy Barrett's predicament were not unique to the Department of Defence last year. It is an unfortunate fact — and it is on record — that the Estimate for most if not all Government Departments were seriously under-provided for to the extent that the whole estimating procedure and budgeting procedures were less than real, and that is probably the most charitable way in which I can put it. But it is clear from the debate so far that those problems of underestimation do not face the Minister this year.
The debate has been concerned generally with conditions of service in the Army — housing, pay and promotion prospects. I would like to spend a few moments on some of those matters. First I would like to echo the compliments that have been paid to the personnel of the Defence Forces. Like most of the Deputies who have spoken I also represent a constituency which has within it a considerable number of Army personnel with garrisons in Athlone, Mullingar and Longford. I can say from my personal knowledge of the way those personnel have integrated into the communities that they are very highly regarded in their communities and have never been found wanting when the communities have asked for assistance which it was within the capacity of the military to give. It has been given generously and, invariably, it has been given efficiently. I would like to pay tribute to the personnel concerned and to the Army generally for the services they provide to the nation both at home and abroad.
In recent years we have had to make extra demands on Army personnel for security duties arising out of the terrorist activities of the IRA. In addition the Army has had extra foreign service to fulfil the requirements of the United Nations operation in different parts of the Middle East. It is common case that these rather unusual duties at home and abroad have been discharged competently and successfully and it is only right that in the Parliament of the nation we should acknowledge that and pay tribute to the people concerned.
One of the main reasons the Army has been successful is that there has been a high standard of morale. Morale is a thing that one cannot define, but one always knows when it is present and equally when it is absent. There are differing factors contributing to morale. The actual physical conditions of service, the accommodation to which Deputy Brennan has referred, both for the serving personnel and their families, are factors that can contribute to morale. The level of pay is obviously a factor that must contribute to morale and general satisfaction. Also the standard of clothing and equipment contribute. We have to examine all these things to make sure that they are kept at a level which will be adequate to ensure in turn that the morale is kept at the desired pitch.
There is one other very important factor and that is that service in the Army will have proper career prospects. Army pay is good and there is general satisfaction with the rates. Every one of us would like to have a greater income but by and large the rates of pay in the Army are satisfactory. But there is one exception — and I would echo Deputy Brennan on this — and that is the extra pay that is made available to members who are serving on security duties. Many of these security duties involve long, invariably, unsocial hours, winter and summer. Some of them involve unpleasant prison duties. Some of them involve unpleasant duties along the Border. I suspect and feel that the level of acknowledgement, in so far as it is given through extra allowances, is not as high as it should be. I would ask the Minister to arrange for an examination of the rates of special allowances for security duties at present being paid to Army personnel. Within that examination it might be possible to recognise that there are some duties that are more unpleasant and more demanding than others and it might be possible to have grades rather than a flat rate. Indeed it is a great tribute to the selflessness of the Army personnel and their loyalty to the service and to their country that we have not had much criticism in that area, particularly when they have to endure the provocation of knowing that members of another uniformed force doing precisely the same duties are rewarded in a much more generous manner. The Army are conscious of this discrepancy but nevertheless their loyalty enables them to accept their slightly prejudiced position vis-à-vis their uniformed colleagues from another service. So I would ask the Minister to consider the allowances for special duties.
On the question of housing, obviously to provide houses for military personnel would be beyond the capacity of the Defence Estimate as framed. I would question whether soldiers should be housed specially by their Department rather than treated as citizens in the normal way to be provided with houses through the normal State agencies whether they be building societies, local authorities, banks and so on. I would be inclined to think that we should pay soldiers the normal wages, arrange for a normal salary structure in the Army so that soldiers can be housed in the same way and with no distinction from the rest of the citizens of the country. But where there are Army quarters — and historically there are some attached to some of the older barracks — every effort should be made to see that Army married quarters, where provided, are up to standard. It would appear from what Dublin Deputies say that this is far from being the case in Dublin. In Athlone there are two small Army schemes with modern houses and the accommodation is up to the standard required.
There is one difficulty about Army personnel living in Army houses, and that is the difficulty that arises when a person's Army service terminates and the question of finding alternative accommodation arises. Very often the member concerned has to look to the local authority and take his place in the queue. If that queue is long, and it invariably is in urban areas, there can be delay before he can vacate the Army house. In the meantime he is prejudiced by virtue of the fact that his pension and gratuity are being withheld for something over which he has no control. He does not have the resources to house himself privately and he finds himself and his family financially prejudiced. This is even worse when service is terminated due to an unexpected death. The trauma of that event is compounded by the understandable but very harsh rule of the Department to withhold pension and gratuity until the house is vacated. The answer would be if there was an ample supply of housing stock in the hands of the local authorities, but that is the optimum position and we are not going to achieve it. When a retirement date is known it should be possible, through close liaison between the local authority and the Army authorities, to arrange accommodation within a reasonable time for those who have to leave Army quarters.
Athlone UDC have been anxious about this problem and have raised it on a number of occasions with the Department of Defence and the Army authorities. On a national scale there must be close liaison between the Department and the local authorities to ensure that this hardship is alleviated as much as possible, and hopefully removed altogether.
With regard to clothing and equipment and other factors which contribute to the morale and well-being of an army, there have been considerable improvements in the last seven or eight years. Our Army is well equipped and well clothed and the physical conditions of service are generally good. Care is taken about catering and there is positive satisfaction about the standards applicable in that area.
There is still some work to be done with regard to clothing and equipment for the FCA. I must compliment the Department on the design of the new tunic for FCA members and I hope to see it on general issue as soon as possible. Wherever it has made its appearance on the streets, it has been very favourably commented on. It is one of the mysteries of the supply system in the public service that new issues seem to become available on a bitty basis. It was a pity this tunic could not have been made available by way of a general issue to all members because it would give a tremendous boost to that service.
There is a further very important area that affects morale, and that is career prospects. Deputy Treacy and Deputy Brennan mentioned that there are officer courses for NCOs to obtain commissioned ranks. I think I am right in correcting Deputy Treacy when I say that these courses have been available for some time but there may not have been as many men on them as we would like to have seen. I endorse the views that more NCOs should be offered places on these courses, because very high quality NCOs are available in our Army and they should have the prospect of attaining commissioned rank.
For those in commissioned rank there should be satisfaction and confidence in the promotion structures and careers opportunities. I have to say categorically that there is serious — I emphasise the word "serious"— dissatisfaction among senior ranks about the promotion policy operating at present. This matter was raised last week by way of question by Deputy Loughnane. He asked the Minister if he was aware of the considerable dismay and concern about the system of promotion, and the Minister indicated that he was not so aware. I want to assure the Minister that what Deputy Loughnane said is fact. There is considerable concern about promotion prospects for senior officers.
Promotions are governed by defence force regulation A 15, section 7, amended in 1979, and sets out the criteria for promotion in commissioned ranks. There is automatic promotion to the rank of Captain, it is a condition of enlistment, and there is promotion to the rank of commandant when the officer has successfully completed the standard course for his service corps, or a course certified as acceptable in lieu thereof, or when he has generally reached the standard acceptable to the Chief of Staff. The previous regulations required in the case of promotion to the rank of commandant that the officer would have successfully completed the commandant staff course. That has been dropped and a person can become a commandant after successfully completing a standard course of his service corps or a course certified by the Chief of Staff.
The commandant staff course could be described as the post-graduate course for commissioned officers. It is a residential and intensive course. On completion of the course candidates are tested in a very exact fashion. Officers who successfully complete this course can be taken to be fully qualified professional Army officers. All officers have the opportunity to go on this course, and they know that if they fail to take this course and complete it successfully their career prospects will not go beyond the rank of commandant. Previously they would not even make commandant without taking this course, but under the changed regulations of 1979, it is now provided that for promotion to the rank of lieutenant-colonel or higher, the officer must have satisfactorily completed commandant staff course or a course certified by the Chief of Staff as acceptable in lieu. Traditionally these alternative courses are generally taken in military establishments abroad. Selected officers may be sent to undergo comparable courses abroad so that the equivalent would be of the same high standard as the commandant staff course run here.
At that stage of an officer's career, all officers have completed this highly professional post-graduate course. We should bear in mind that the initial selection procedures were very exact, because only the best were picked from a very high number of applications. The initial training in the cadet college and the initial courses in the service corps were all of a very high standard, with the result that when officers had passed the commandant staff course there was a pretty uniformly high level of professional expertise. Obviously, there would be differences of personality and of capacity, as there would be in any group of people serving in a specialised avocation, but by and large, the level of professional competence would be pretty well uniform. Some men would be more energetic than others, some more easy-going than others, all the different qualities of the human personality, to distinguish people from each other, but the level of professional competence and professional expertise would, generally, be on a par. Consequently, when choices had to be made for promotion there was a difficulty for those in charge of promotions—how to distinguish between these people who were generally, comparable with each other.
The regulations say that, in recommending an officer for promotion, the Chief of Staff should certify that the officer is considered fitted to fill the appointment to the higher ranks — obviously this is a truism — has given evidence of reliability, devotion to duty, zeal, industry, ability, initiative and, where applicable, the faculty of leadership — these are desirable qualities and one would assume that senior officers having served up to 30 years in the Army would have displayed all those qualities — and has been recommended in his annual confidential report. That is fair enough. An unsatisfactory confidential report would rule out an officer if he had blotted his copybook in some way. The Chief of Staff had to certify all those things. As I have mentioned he must have regard to the fact that the officer has successfully completed the commandant staff course, or an equivalent course. The next factor to which the Chief of Staff must have regard is whether in addition to fulfilling the requirements mentioned above as appropriate — and I quote fromt he regulations:
the officer has successfully completed a course of instruction or passed any examinations or test for which he has been detailed;
That is a new requirement since 1979, and I shall deal with its implications shortly.
The next thing he must have regard to in the case of promotion other than promotion under paragraph 8 which deals with specialised matters and need not be mentioned here, is the officer's place in the seniority list, both in regard to service course seniority and seniority in the permanent Defence Forces. That requirement in regard to seniority has been heavily weighted in promotions in the Army up to now. It has been accepted in the Army as being a critical factor in promotions. Seniority is important in the Army, so much so that there is a special Defence Force Regulation A. 17 — these are statutory instruments — which provides that the Adjutant-General must prepare a Defence Force list which determines the seniority of officers. That is a public, official document in which the seniority of all officers is listed. Officers know where they are in terms of seniority vis-à-vis their colleagues. One can see, therefore, how important seniority is when dealing with an organisation where the levels of professional efficiency are by and large comparable.
Seniority has always been recognised traditionally in the Army as being a very important factor in promotion to senior ranks — not the exclusive or deciding factor but, other things being equal, then the deciding factor. This is very important for the career prospects of officers. When an officer reaches the rank of commandant he is generally in his early to mid-thirties. At that stage he knows the seniority list and, traditionally in the Army, officers at that stage of their careers have been able to look at this list and make a very good assessment that if their career proceeds according to normal lines and if they successfully and competently carry out all the duties, tests and courses which they undertake, and know, looking at the seniority list, pretty certainly what their prospects are of becoming Lieutenant-Colonels, pretty certainly — though less certainly — what their prospects are of becoming full Colonels and the prospect then of going to higher ranks.
At that critical stage of his career, the officer can decide to make a career in the Army. That is a critical decision for a man in his mid thirties to make — would he continue in the Army or are his career prospects such as to make a continuing Army career attractive? He can do that because seniority has been a factor and has been honoured in the promotion system heretofore. If that were not the case and a person in his mid-thirties was unsure of his position, he would look around for alternative civilian employment. Very often, for Army officers at that stage of energy and training there are civilian career opportunities. It is a difficult decision for a person to make, whether to take the civilian opportunity and leave the avocation in which he originally wanted to spend his life. To enable him to make that choice he must know if he has a career in the Army. Up to now, he knew that by looking at the seniority list. Unfortunately, in the last couple of years the system of regard to the seniority list has been breached on a number of occasions, giving cause for considerable unrest and, as Deputy McMahon has said, dismay and concern about the promotion system. No longer is it possible for an officer to look at the seniority list and know how his career prospects will work out, provided the other matters referred to are in order, provided he had completed his courses and displayed all the necessary qualities of an Army officer.
The level of professional skill is generally comparable at those ranks in the Army. At that stage, we have to look for some effective criterion, and the seniority criterion as an objective criterion has worked well, generally, in the Army. It is not infallible; no human system is infallible. It has had the great strength of being objective. The great strength there is that Army officers knew that their career prospects did not depend on party-political influences or on any element of an "old boy" network within the Army. Now we are no longer sure. I would hate to see an attitude coming into our Army which prevails in another uniformed force which shall be nameless, where there is a common belief that promotions, preferment and postings depend, if not on party-political influence certainly on an internal "old boy" network. That is why I say to the Minister that this is a serious problem which he must consider.
There is one other point which I said I would come back to, one of the matters to which the Chief of Staff had to have regard when recommending for promotion, that is, whether the officer has successfully completed any course of instruction or passed any examination for which he has been detailed. Recently there has been introduced into the Army what has been called a senior officer course. This is unlike the command and staff course, which is an intensive post-graduate training available for all officers. On completion there is a test to find out whether or not the officer has completed it successfully.
This senior officers' course is quite informal. It is not open to all senior officers. There appears to be no objective means by which the officers who go on this course are picked. It is not tested on completion to see if it has made any difference to the professional expertise of the officer concerned. Some officers have gone on this course — I do not say improperly or unjustly in any way — and having gone on it, having regard to the way the regulations are now framed, they then have an advantage over their colleagues who are not lucky enough to be asked to go on this course. Bearing in mind that this course is not tested and, so far as I know, it is not residental, it is called a senior officers' course.
When an officer has undertaken this course, the Chief of Saff has to have regard to that fact, and an officer with that course under his belt is at an advantage over a colleague who may be senior to him and, in terms of professional competence, may well be senior and superior as well. Because he was not lucky enough to go on the course a senior and possibly more competent or equally competent colleague is passed over because the man who has been on the course has the extra so-called qualification under the regulations. That provision is also causing considerable unrest.
There is one further matter to which I want to refer in the context of the question of morale among senior officers. It is very important that the officer corps should have a high morale and that they are satisfied with their conditions of service. My point deals with the rather sensitive area of the annual confidential reports. Defence Force regulation A.15 provides that there shall be annual confidential reports on officers. These are what they say they are, confidential reports on officers made by a superior officer and they go on the officers' records. They are available to the superior officers when it comes to the question of promotions.
According to the regulation, the annual confidential report awards an officer a rating of either satisfactory or unsatisfactory, and that is it. If there is disagreement between the reporting officers, the Adjutant General can award a final rating. If an officer is rated unsatisfactory, he has to sign this confidential report document which is called an AF 451 acknowledging the fact that he has been found unsatisfactory. If he wishes he can submit representations. The Adjutant General could subsequently award a final rating of satisfactory and the report would be amended accordingly. If the Adjutant General so agrees the officer can be shown the reasons why he was found to be unsatisfactory. That is the system which has been working and has been accepted. Officers knew exactly where they stood.
Last year this reporting procedure was changed. I have grave doubts about the legality of the change because it does not appear to be sustained by a similar change in the Defence Force Regulations. The validity of the annual confidential reports depends on the Defence Force Regulations. That regulation provides for two ratings, satisfactory or unsatisfactory. With the change we have a document which provides for all sorts of ratings of the officers being reported upon from outstanding, above average, average — how does one distinguish between above average and average? — up to the minimum standard required, to the old one, unsatisfactory.
In making those assessments the reporting officer has to consider integrity, leadership and management, decisiveness, judgment, initiative, acceptance of responsibility, planning and organising ability, efficiency in performance of duty, powers of comprehension, co-operation, dependability and administrative ability. All that reads very well, and obviously these are all desirable things to be taken into account when an officer is making an assessment of a junior colleague.
To have to go on and rate all those varied qualities under the various gradings from outstanding down to unsatisfactory imposes an impossible task on the reporting officer. Obviously it was feared that reporting officers might be worried about the duty being imposed on them, because on the front of this document in the instructions to the reporting officer it is set out that there should be no ambiguities and that where comments are made which imply that corrective action should be taken, suitable action should be taken.
It says that lack of clarity will be referred back to the reporting officer. Then underlined is the rather dubious statement that the compilation of the report will be used as a source of information about the reporting officer. I do not have to spell out to the Minister and the House the consequences of that type of direction, or the atmosphere it must bring into this whole system of reporting.
Obviously reporting on fellow officers is a sensitive area. This sensitivity was recognised in the earlier regulations under which the rating was satisfactory or unsatisfactory. That has been accepted in the Army up to now. We now have this change in the annual confidential report which goes into the greatest of detail of subjective assessments of all sorts of metaphysical qualities which then have to be rated under five different headings. If the reporting officer does not do his job, somebody could use that as a reflection on him. What position does that put the reporting officer in? What is the position of the officers being reported upon? How will they comport themselves vis-à-vis their colleagues whom they have to meet socially and professionally in barracks up and down the country? How will they comport themselves in relation to the reporting officers?
On the last page of this document under the heading "Guide to Completion of AF 451 and AF 451A" there is a list of desirable qualities which, it is said, may be of help when compiling relevant paragraphs. The first is adaptability — adjusts to new or changing situations. It could also mean he was able to compromise to please others, particularly his superior officers. The next is ambition —seeks and welcomes, within bounds the military propriety, additional and more important responsibilities. Again, depending on the personalities of the reported upon and the reporter, ambition could mean that he was prepared to push. Some people might like that and some people might not.
Another quality is co-operation — works in harmony with others as a team member. There is not much difference between that and adaptability. The next is dependability — consistently accomplishes desired actions with minimum supervision. That is a very desirable quality, but it could also mean that he does not annoy the boss and he watches himself. Another is ingenuity — creative ability in devising means to solve problems.
One could be cynical about how these desirable qualities are going to be interpreted. Next is moral courage — intellectual honesty, willingness to speak without equivocation. That is something we all like to see in others and think we have ourselves. People with that quality will have to look at loyalty — faithful and willing support to superiors and subordinates. There is room for conflict there. Tenacity — the will to persevere in the face of obstacles. If the obstacle happens to be a senior officer and it might also be the reportin officer who wants a particular thing done his way which the junior officer feels is the wrong way, is he to show tenacity? Will it be recognised as such — willing to persevere in the face of obstacles — or will it be interpreted as stubborness? I descry the hand of a psychologist behind that nonsence and I would earnestly suggest to the Minister that a serious look should be taken immediately at the system of annual confidential reports and that there should be an immediate reversion to the old system by which an officer was found to be satisfactory or unsatisfactory and his promotion depended on the sole requirement of successfully completing the command and staff course, having the necessary devotion to duty, zeal and industry that officers normally display in the course of their duty and that proper regard be had to the place in the seniority list.
I assure the Minister that what Deputy Loughnane referred to as dismay and concern at the present promotion procedures is true, is widespread and becoming more widespread in the Army. There is a feeling that promotion is no longer objective as it was in the past. This worries many officers who stayed in the Army when they might have opted for an alternative career in their early days but because they knew where they were in the seniority list and knew its importance in promotion they were able to make an assessment of their career prospects. If that position has been damaged, as I am informed it has been, it is important that the Minister should take steps to restore it immediately.
The only other matter I wish to mention is in relation to Civil Defence. Previous speakers have described this service as being a cinderella, which is not an inaccurate description. We pride ourselves on our neutrality but in the event of an outbreak of hostilities that involved us it would be of vital importance to the safety of the nation and the population that we should have an efficient Civil Defence organisation. We do not have that at present; perhaps we will never need it and that we would find our neutrality continuing to be protected by friendly countries and NATO and that we can do without Civil Defence. But when we have a Civil Defence service it should be an efficient and well-organised one which would be recognised as having an important role to play. Even if it never had — please God it never will have — any role to play in the context of hostilities, it could have a very definite role to play in terms of dealing physical, natural disasters. Happily, we do not suffer from them even to the extent of adjoining countries but when they come even on the scale of the last blizzard, it is important to have a Civil Defence organisation capable of coping with whatever might arise. It would not require money, only administration and organisation and attention to the men and women of the Civil Defence service to let them know that they are appreciated, to involve them more in expansion of their duties and training and above all where possible to keep them supplied with proper equipment.
I will conclude by repeating that the Army are entitled to the best thanks of the House for loyal and uncomplaining service. Because traditionally the Army have been uncomplaining and do not have any outlet for making complaints through staff associations and so on — I hope the day will never come when they will have such complaints — it is important that when a complaint does come through the parliamentary or democratic process via a Deputy and when it is a complaint as serious as I think the complaint about dissatisfaction with the present promotion system to senior rank is concerned, it behoves the Minister, because of the peculiar situation and nature and structure of our Army and their relationship to the Executive and to parliament, as the person responsible to parliament for the wellbeing of that organisation to pay careful heed to what is being said here. I endorse what was described by Deputy Loughnane as being a situation of dismay and concern with the present reporting and promotion procedure.
