Martin says hiring of 400 Defence Forces recruits a 'realistic target'
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Defence and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin has said the hiring of 400 new military recruits that the Government is aiming to achieve in Budget 2024 is a “realistic target”, and that if the State “can go beyond that then we will”.
Personnel levels in the Defence Forces are at a historic low in the context of scandals relating to the treatment of women in the service and ongoing wrangles over members’ pay.
Speaking in Dublin to discuss the budgets for his two departments, Mr Martin said he “fundamentally” disagrees with the assertion from opposition TDs and representative groups that insufficient resources have been allocated to the Defence Forces, which is set to receive an additional €55m in the budget.
Just €6m of that figure has been allocated towards recruitment, according to budget documents released on Tuesday.
He said he had pointed out to independent TD and former Defence Forces member Cathal Berry, who had been critical of the budget allocations, that “€13.8m had been approved for medical care for all enlisted personnel”, care which had previously only been available for officers.
Mr Martin said while he is willing to “accept criticism and the fact that there is a need to do more” with regard to funding the Defence Forces and An Garda Síochána, it nevertheless “struck” him in the aftermath of the recent seizure of €157m worth of cocaine from a cargo ship off the Cork coast that “within hours it had to be turned into a negative story” by the news media.
Regarding an increase of €60m in Ireland’s foreign aid budget to a total of €777m, Mr Martin said that the figure includes €30m in climate finance funding for developing countries.
He said there would be no stop placed on aid to the Palestinian Authority from the European Commission, to which Ireland contributed despite the outbreak of hostilities last weekend in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas.
Mr Martin said that the levels of aid which would be made available to Palestine in 2024 is not yet finalised. Some €16m was allocated for the assistance of the Palestinian people in 2023, said the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Tánaiste said that the budget for 2024 shows the Government is “serious about tackling the serious problems facing our country”, and that it had been produced by an administration which “has nurtured and protected our social and economic progress”.
Mr Martin denied that the Government had disproportionately prioritised landlords in its budget reliefs, saying that the €3,000 tax credit for small landlords for 2024 is a relatively “modest” allocation.
On claims that discrepancies between official CSO data and registrations with the Residential Tenancies Board suggest that the number of landlords has actually increased in the past three years, rather than landlords ‘fleeing the market’, Mr Martin said that “there is no doubt there’s been an exodus from the market", adding that "recent surveys have borne that out”.