RACO CONFERENCE:The Government can no longer fund Defence Forces' overseas missions by reducing the numbers of military personnel and selling military lands, the general secretary of the Representative Association for Commissioned Officers (Raco) has said.
Col Brian O'Keeffe told delegates at the association's biennial conference it was particularly important that additional funding be made available for equipment such as armoured personnel carriers, which were vital to missions such as that recently completed in Liberia.
"Equipment wears out and must be replaced and, because of extremely heavy usage due to constant overseas service in extreme conditions, will not last as long as it may have in the past."
Given the Defence Forces' roles in Kosovo, the new Nordic battlegroup and in the UN mandated mission in Chad and the Central African Republic, reductions in personnel and the sale of property could not continue indefinitely.
Already the €7 million cost to date of the battlegroup had been paid for by savings elsewhere in the defence budget. He believed any similar future "cannibalisation" would be unacceptable.
"Therefore a key question that must be addressed in the second White Paper is how major equipment programmes are to be funded in the future."
The White Paper will dictate all future development across the Defence Forces from 2011 to 2020.
Col O'Keeffe suggested to Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea that the White Paper should be in part informed by review groups made up of representative associations such as Raco.
He told Mr O'Dea of an unacceptable lack of information being made available by the Department of Defence to Defence Forces members on important issues.
For example, some members had seen deductions of up to €2,000 taken from their salaries, following alleged overpayments, with no warning that the money was to be deducted.
Raco president Lieut Col Michael Baston said many young officers who recently began studies at different third-level institutions found it impossible to get information on where they would be living while studying.
