Interesting articles

In the piece it said that an additional allocation was already made earlier in the year, but it wasn't sufficient.

The fact the Department didn't put enough fat on their request for a top-up in the first place is just incompetence. Any good executive would track the trend and add a contingency. Basic stuff.

From the article, there was.

Any other public or private business were employees told we will give you an IOU there would be outrage and a demand for heads.

That article is honestly enraging!
The RDF and the growth in recruitment are one of the few genuine success stories we can point to in Irish defence policy and implementation...

And the Department manages to fúck even that small win up, via weapons grade incompetence.

Perhaps that's what we should hinge our defence own? Our talent for making the simple, arcane and expensive🤔

Believe it or not, the cardinal sin of the civil service is to consistently and continuously hand back current budget, whatever your department.

Rather than gaining you brownie points for saving money, it shows utter incompetence on the part of the department to plan and implement.

Well yes, but at the same time budget lines for payroll and allowances are sacrosanct. You cannot in any circumstances migrate that allocation. In or out. Its why they had already applied for new budget earlier in the year and not merely absorbed in from other current expenditure.

As a one-time assistant principal in a state agency, who prepared and submitted annual budgets to the department for consideration, it was what I was always instructed.

You can compensate across operational budget lines for over/under, but you cannot ever take from or add to your payroll budget without approval. You can't capitalise unspent budget at FY end either.

We know from the last decade that the Defence budget for current expenditure is never fully spent, yet the DF and the DoD do not have the discretion to compensate for an overrun in remuneration, such as this, by balancing it across their operational budget lines. They must take it to DPER. Which, as we know from the article, they did. And they still ended up going over. Because they are incompetent.

Hope thats all clear enough for you.

Are they doing research why so many do not make it to the 1st day of basic training and what is causing them not to show up or get pass the interview. Is there people just applying for social welfare reasons or what is ruling them out?

It has.

By a net 76 in 2024.

Thats what blew the budget. 76 part-time reservists.

it is, and yet with how low the numbers are in the reserves still an improvement.

I'd take any figures on the strength of the reserves (past or present) with a huge heap of salt. I know of a few units with phantom members on the books who haven't been seen in years but they've never been officially discharged because the unit is afraid someone in the DoD will see the low numbers as an excuse to amalgamate/close them.

From personal experience, the number of applications to join the RDF shouldn't be read too much into either. It's the lowest imaginable commitment to just sign your name to an online form and a huge number of these applicants change their minds pretty much immediately and are never heard from again.

I remember a fellow reservist telling me that himself and 2 friends agreed to join the same unit at the same time, but that his 2 friends quit at the first hurdle and bailed on the open night because it was raining. It's fair to say those 2 were never even potential reservists, but there are a lot like them out there.

There exists many instances of Government subheads going over budget and the problem being solved before people are impacted. Rules and process in the blue book exist for this very thing. That people were still impacted tells you all you need to here.

The Times seems to be reporting that the mission will be extended for another year at this stage:

https://www.thetimes.com/article/65bc2330-e68b-4353-b789-0364cdc3ac69

If any permanent UN security council member vetoes the renewal of the mandate, it ends.

A year-by-year renewal would be typical Trump administration nonsense

.

I had listened to two-thirds of it earlier, he seems like a safe pair of hands and on top of the higher priorities, but it is disappointing to hear from him that the force re-org and appointment of the Chief of Defence and service commanders could be up to two years away.

On the plus side of the ledger, the standing up of Cyber Defence Command and the reorg of J2 into IMIS, and the push for mass recruitment into both, are to be welcomed.