Senator Gerard Craughwell - speech from 16 Nov 2022

Thank you very much, Glasgow Hearlach. I would never question your impartiality in the seat either. A man of honour indeed. Deputy Leader, I frequently speak here about our Defence Forces. Yesterday I had the honour to visit the Air Corps in Baldonnel. What a wonderful group of people, what wonderful servants and loyal servants of the State I met, and how pathetically they are supportive. We have eight training aircraft in Baldonnel for training pilots. Six of them are on the ground and can't be used. We have helicopters. A number of them are on the ground and cannot be used. The deficit in the Air Corps is over 50% of technicians. Over 50%. The overall strength of the Air Corps is 26% below its establishment. I met apprentices there yesterday, young men and women who were starting out on their degree programme. They are three-star privates because they must complete their three-star training before they can go on and start their apprenticeship properly. And yet they are not paid. They are paid an apprentice salary. That is just unfair in every sense of the word. If they were in industry, we would be down at the Workplace Relations Commission and we would put a comparator beside them. Three-star gets paid X, three-star in the Air Corps gets paid the same. It is just wrong in every sense of the word. And I would ask you, Deputy Leader, to bring that through your own party system to try and get some degree of equity for those people. But one of the strange things from one of those apprentices I spoke to yesterday, a young lady. I said to her, you know, are you really worried about your income? And she said, yes, we're out in Baldonado. We're a long way from anywhere. She said, having any sort of a life here is quite difficult. The cost of fuel is making it very difficult. I can't go home only maybe every third weekend or something like that. But I said to her, so what's your ask? What do you want me to do for you? What can I bring forward for you? She said, please bring forward the fact that my instructors are not paid an allowance. And I could not understand how that is the case. We have, you know yourself because you were the uniform, Deputy Leader. We have allowances for instructors. Now, I would ask you to bring that forward as well. And I will have lots more to say about the Air Corps in the coming weeks, not least of which is the grave error of this country in not including them right now in search and rescue services. Thank you, Lascar. Thank you.