I have a feeling the specifics will be gone over in multiple sub-threads, but let's use this for discussion of the report in one neat place, shall we?
Horrible-looking link to the PDF, but it works.
What do you believe is the government’s intention here? Do they not want any meaningful defence, even at current level, are they just incompetent or are there disagreements between government parties, departments? This crisis is not new, little seems to be happening, at least on the face of it.
So if the implementation plan is released in the coming weeks do we expect actual action or more delays?
Custume would make a wonderful school in this growing town, or maybe a graduate school for the IT. It could be an hotel or a top class hostel type accommodation for people exploring Ireland on a budget, by bike or on foot. It could be an enterprise hub or a specialist health facility or private clinic. People could even pay to sleep in the Cold War government nuclear bunker!
It could be anything really, save for high security bespoke 21st Century standard land component Headquarters, which is what is needed.
In any case, to retain the buildings of historical importance would still mean that most the site could be sold off and/or opened up as new amenity and public realm space.
Then pay for a new installation for the DF and the move them out of it, given it to the OPW to keep as a museum/money sink. Asking the DF to sustain the costs to maintain heritage buildings while trying to use them as needed for modern demands is insane..
Ah sure, it’s not like there’s any global instability to worry about…
So have they forgot to publish the detailed implementation plan that was due at the end of Q2?
There is nearly an argument the DF should be in receipt of heritage grants given so much of their real estate is of the historic variety… for conservation and upkeep …
Custume Barracks is the oldest working barracks in Europe. Many of the buildings date from the late 17th / early 18th century and are of significant architectural and historical importance. They need to be preserved no matter what the long term plan is for the site
Fair.
The Commission spend enoght time on the report they must have a good valid reason why they have recommend that the New Army HQ should be geographically located centreally in the country
I have to say, I don't see any reason why that should not be the case. Still plenty close enough to Dublin and main roads. The UK's HQs for Navy and Army are both located near the major concentrations of military training and basing areas, near Portsmouth and Warminster/Salisbury/Aldershot. I see little reason for geographic centrality over military concentration.
Good idea. No point in dispersing people all over the place.
Build it on or near the Curragh ….
Custume and Renmore are perfectly good as Barracks and would hopefully have a positive future, particularly with investment in a renewed Reserve etc.
But what is being forgotten here, is that Army HQ, as envisioned in the force structure adopted in the Commission report, is NOT a Barracks. It is to be a command office for the Army nationwide, so its main features will be offices for Departments ranging from Intelligence to Logistics, IT facilities, secure communications suites, signal intelligence analysis, chart rooms, secure conference facilities, perhaps Training suites for academic study, duty sleeping accommodation etc etc.
It will remove these functions from their scattered venues like McKee, the Curragh, Newbridge and put the command and staff officers under one roof.
Needless to say, this is a long way from a typical Irish Army Barracks with its dorms and stores and workshops and garages.
Take a look at British Army HQ in Hampshire, its just a big office park, with very few outward signs of it being a military facility at all.
If you built a new base there fo Army HQ is there then a need for Athlone & Galway?
Aye, but they didn't specify Custume Barracks did they? Or anywhere for that matter.
There are more places in the centre of the Country than a square mile on the shabby side of the River in Athlone.
A green field site is the ideal for this.
Its the Commission that said the new Army HQ should be located in the center of the country. They didnt come up with that idea for local votes
I'm sure he couldn't give a flying shyte.
Its about time we got real about the prospects for some of these ancient barracks to serve as modern force command headquarters.
And I don't just mean the age of the built infrastructure, I mean a secure zone around the base, the space to expand in future if necessary, the space to operate 24/7, with aircraft movements and live firing, in such a way that pain in the hole local Councillors won't be up in arms over noise.
Personally I think these new command HQs should be on green field sites, near to big towns and motorways, but very much on their own.
Let Athlone and Mullingar and the rest go for urban regeneration.
This Article is a few weeks old but The Taniste well not be a welcomed man in Mullingar
To coin a phrase or two:
1. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
2. Life is something that happens while you are busy making plans.
Yeah, that was fairly depressing, all right. It looks like a fairly serious restructuring is required (Again). There's enough wrong that we can probably have an RDF-specific thread.
Some observations, though.
1) They are making most of the right noises. The existential question of "Why do we have a reserve?" was brought up several times. There needs to be some purpose for it, for two reasons. Firstly the morale purpose of folks training to do a job they never get to do, and secondly, so that the taxpayer gets some practical return on the investment that they are putting into the organisation. Whilst having a surge capacity for WW3 may have its own merits, it's silly to not use reservists on the operations currently being conducted. The 100-day-limit referenced for activation is silly when tours tend to be six months. If the PDF suddenly realises that they are in a position that the RDF can actually help them, then the RDF concerns will be thrown to the bottom of the priority list less frequently since helping the RDF will then help the PDF.
2) You can't get something for nothing. There seems to be some idea going around, not exactly voiced in committee, but I think the undertones are there, that the answers for the reserve are primarily regulatory. "Let PDF come in at their prior rank. Outsource medicals to private doctors. Add employment protections". That's all well and good, but Euros need to be thrown at it as well. Reservists will give you more 'value for your dollar' than equivalent PDF personnel, but even if EUR 3 is less than EUR 5, you still need to fork out the 3.
3) Very briefly mentioned towards the end, but soldiers have one standard. The bullet coming at you doesn't care if you're a reservist or not. No particular discussion directed towards how to achieve that standard. Granted, you need to have the people first.
4) Distances to reserve training centers. Sure, if you can have a training hall in every town of 50,000 people or more (or whatever), then great, but as alluded to in the discussion, modern training requires more than just the church parish hall. It requires some solid infrastructure which may cost more money than practicable to install in every town. If this means you need to drive a whiles to a place where meaningful training can be conducted, then so be it. In my 23 years in the Guard, I have never been less than a 90 minute drive from my unit. My current unit of assignment is over 750km from my house. US regulation defines "Not in the local area" for reservists as over 150 miles, or 2 hours. Yes, it costs me money to get there. However, yes, I get paid to train. Bottom line, though, if people are motivated by the idea of training in whatever unit they selected, they'll make it there as long as they are not actively penalised by it. It may mean changing to a 'weekends' model instead of a 'weekday evenings' model.
5) Matching RDF training schedules with PDF training. I get it, I'm an augmentee to an active duty unit. I spent two weeks in February on an exercise, and then three in April on the next one. It was the major training exercise for the Division, and it wasn't done with folks' university schedules in mind. The idea that reservists should only be asked to train in the summer and on weekends can't stand if you're going to be assigned to a PDF unit. We can get away with it because we go on paid orders, and have employment protection. And if some folks really couldn't get away because of their final exams the next month, we didn't force them to. Courses, however, often can be taken with a prioritisation on Summer dates.
6) Entry physicals. I disagree a bit with the idea that folks shouldn't have to pass fitness tests or medicals to be in the Army. I mean, we're talking basic fitness levels here. If they're going to be in the military, then the organisation will take responsibility for taking care of their health and there is a certain level of reliability required. Fit people are less likely to suffer from ailment or disease, have greater resilience to infection. Even if they're not running up a hill with a GPMG, they may well find themselves in austere environments, sitting behind a computer keyboard in a non-air-conditioned building in Lebanon, for example. If the government wants a team of part-timers who can leap into action at the next cyber-attack, I'm sure there is some form of civilian contractor position which could be created in the Dept of Defense to keep them on retainer for emergency use.
7) Matching units with the local environment. There was a comment made such as 'put a signals unit next to an IT school, a medical unit next to a doctor school.' The commission made a similar comment, and I fear they might go a bit too far. People don't always want to join to do on the weekend what they do during the week. I worked in IT when I enlisted in the US, the recruiter immediately wanted to slot me into signals as it was my civilian job. No, I wanted to blow things up. I sat behind a computer Monday to Friday, why on Earth would I voluntarily do it more? Give recruits a reasonable choice of options. The guy mentioned who was studying to be an astrophysicist may well have just wanted to do nothing more than charge up hills with a machinegun.
8) Presumably when new PDF recruits turn up, they get assessed by a medical. Since the doctors and facilities etc are already there, why don't they just add the reservist applicants to the end of the queue? We run a similar structure here in the US, when you show up at MEPS, you're thrown in with recruits from every branch, active and reserve.
9) I was surprised that the committee weren't actually sure of their purpose and authorities. But it'll be interesting to see how far they get at attempting to gain accountability for their questions.
Please continue to link any other such videos.
As an aside, what was the end result, if any, of the consultative forum?
Fu@k me that was a depressing watch. I presume everything the DOD has done to the RDF as being due to advice from the PDF.
I was thinking more about poor project management in the State sector, manifesting as political over-promising not being reconcileable with the actual time it would take to do something. Especially something as big as this step-change plan in Defence.
And I would suggest Government offices are deserted more because of the 60/40 working-from-home mandate to aid 'green' targets.
I am sure there are plenty of the senior ranks that would do 12/18 months as a interim service boss for there CV and more important the extra points on the pension
A clearing of the decks as it were...
Cathal Berry had said recently that an easy thing the government could do is appoint the 3 new service chiefs on an interm basis. So we could maybe see something like that and even the New Army HQ put in motion
If you set your watch by the deadlines set by Government Departments for anything, then you'll likely be late for your own funeral.
In fairness the Head of Transformation is only coming into post around now.
The Dáil is in recess from July 13th and Departments tend to go into hibernation for about 6 weeks after that. If there isn't some sort of update by the end next week then it'll be September.
So we are now in the 3rd quarter of the year. Mr Martin or his minions said a few weeks a go a full plan on how they would get the CoDF LOA2 in place would be publised by the end of the 2nd quarter. So will we see a plan this week??
I must see if some the debate is online, I assume it is well informed and from an expert position- which I’m all about. The problem for the likes of me is issues such as neutrality, as we practice it, are illogical, riddled with inconsistencies and based more on emotional sentiments than any logic. However, I accept I’m in a minority and get on with it unlike some of the element there today.
So I see that the opening day of the security and foreign policy fora, in UCC, was interrupted by so-called anti-war protestors and dissident Green party members, trying to shout down the Tánaiste during his opening remarks and during the contribution of others.
Who could have guessed that an open ticket policy would have resulted in a circus?
I have a ticket for Dublin Castle on Tuesday myself, but I may not bother my ass as I think this process has been hijacked too much now to be of much value.
In my opinion, the first thing Varadkar and Martin should have done on Monday morning was to commit to a Citizen's Assembly in 2024 to examine the issues raised and summarised at these fora, which would have shut down most complaints of this exercise being an echo chamber.
