'Our Defence Forces are in decline because no one cares'

A retired Army officer living in Athlone said he believes the Defence Forces have been in "significant decline" for more than a decade, due to "political neglect and public indifference".

The comments from Kiltoom resident Ger Aherne, a retired Brigadier General, come amid an ongoing retention and recruitment crisis in the military.

Figures recently provided to Independent TD Violet Anne Wynne showed that just one woman had been inducted into the Defence Forces so far this year.

Brig Gen (Retd) Aherne has been calling for improvements to the Defence Forces since his retirement in 2014.

"I've been advocating, along with others, for almost ten years. But no one cares. No one is listening," he told the Westmeath Independent.

"The Defence Forces has been in significant decline for the last decade, in particular since the last reorganisation in 2012.

"I would think there are growing concerns among those who are truly interested in the Defence Forces, and know what's truly going on in the Defence Forces, that the Defence Forces can ever recover from this."

He said the current issues ultimately stemmed from "political neglect and public indifference - and included in that public indifference is journalistic indifference".

Referring to the decision to abolish the Athlone-based Fourth Western Brigade, he said: "We lost 607 Defence Forces appointments in Athlone in 2012. It happened without a murmur.

"The State started interfering with the terms and conditions of service for the Defence Forces in the 1990s.

"It got worse in the '00s, and then the hammer blow for, not alone the Defence Forces but the Gardai, the prison service, and the ambulance service, was the Government decision in 2013 to produce a 'one size fits all' public service.

"They want to have a situation whereby civil servants in Government departments have roughly the same general conditions as someone who dismantles a bomb for the Army, someone who is on board a naval ship in the Atlantic, someone who is flying critical missions for the Air Corps, a Garda on the beat, and someone who is in the ambulance service.

"A 'one size fits all' public service. It doesn't work. It can't work. Working in the public service is not the attraction it was before."

He explained the 2012 reorganisation of the Defence Forces had led to a situation whereby Army members in the Midlands, West, and North West were being asked to commute on a continuous basis in order to carry out their duties.

"Before the 2012 reorganisation there were five operational units in Dublin. Now, since 2012, there's only two.

"The number of operational duties in Dublin has not decreased, so in order to fill that gap there are soldiers being transported every day of the week, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, in rotation, either from Dundalk, Athlone or Donegal, to Dublin, to do routine duties that before 2012 were done with the troops that were stationed in Dublin."

He said the Defence Forces had also made a strategic mistake by over-emphasising its international service, and that it would "always struggle" if it was not seen to have a clear reason for existing, "on land, sea, and air on the island of Ireland".

"At the moment, and for a long time, the Defence Forces across the three services has 42 mandated tasks on the island of Ireland.

"Quite a few of those tasks are what's called contingency tasks - like an insurance policy. But you have to recruit, train and allocate personnel to be available to respond to that contingency.

"We have never emphasised, or platformed sufficiently, those 42 taskings," he said.

One of the recommendations in the report from the Commission on the Defence Forces, which was published eighteen months ago, was that an Army headquarters should be established.

The report recommended that this headquarters should be centrally located, which has led to speculation that Athlone's Custume Barracks could be the site chosen for it.

However, Brig Gen (Retd) Aherne pointed out that the Commission's report had so far not resulted in any real changes being made in the Defence Forces.

"The Commission on the Defence Forces reported in February 2022. Not a single tangible change in the Defence Forces has been made since then.

"There's discussions going on, and there's high-level meetings taking place, but there have been no actions," he said.

When asked what was likely to happen in the years ahead if the current situation didn't change, he replied: "The Defence Forces will wither on the vine.

"No one cares. There's no votes in it."