Jennifer Carroll MacNeill
Ceist:73. Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill asked the Minister for Defence the way in which the extra €67 million budget allocation will be spent in 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48988/22]
Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions
Departmental Budgets
Neale Richmond
Ceist:88. Deputy Neale Richmond asked the Minister for Defence the funding provided for the Defence Forces in budget 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48885/22]
I welcome the increased allocation for the Department of Defence that was announced in the budget. Will the Minister outline how that increased funding, which is very welcome, will be spent in 2023?
I propose to take Questions Nos. 73 and 88 together.
For 2023, the total allocation for the Defence group is €1.174 billion, comprising €893 million for Vote 36, Defence, and €281 million for Vote 35, Army pensions. This is an overall increase of €67 million on 2022 and double the increase last year. The allocation reflects the commitment of the Government to providing a financial platform for the defence sector to initiate the transformation of the Defence Forces, as recommended by the Commission on the Defence Forces. It also brings our defence capabilities closer to European norms and ensures the Defence Forces maintain their ongoing capacity to deliver on all roles assigned by the Government, both at home and overseas.
The Commission on the Defence Forces reinforced the urgent requirement for significant capital investment on defensive equipment programmes and upgrading and modernising the Defence Forces' built infrastructure. The capital allocation has increased by €35 million for next year to €176 million, which is a 25% increase in one year. This allocation represents the single biggest annual capital investment ever provided for defence. Many of the military equipment projects are complex, multi-annual and have long lead-in times. The additional funding now provided will further enable the Department and the Defence Forces to plan, prioritise and deliver on scheduled projects over the coming years. In particular, it allows my Department to progress its consideration of the development of a primary radar capability and the procurement of additional force protection equipment. A significant number of building projects will also advance under the Defence Forces built infrastructure programme, which will modernise and upgrade defence built infrastructure over the coming months. I referred to the capital investment plan of more than €70 million over the next few years for Haulbowline naval base, which is part of that.
The allocation for current expenditure in the Defence Vote has increased by €22 million to €717 million, made of up €175 million to meet standing and operational costs and €542 million for the ongoing pay and allowances of the Defence Forces, civilian employees and departmental civil servants, including the costs associated with the existing Building Momentum pay deal. The allocation includes funding to facilitate further recruitment to the Permanent Defence Force, in line with the recommendations of the commission. Funding is also provided to facilitate implementation of a number of key recommendations of the commission, such as specific enhancements to pay and allowances and the recruitment of a head of transformation and head of strategic HR in the Defence Forces, as outlined in the high-level action plan.
The allocation for Vote 35, Army pensions, has increased by €10 million to €281 million and will meet the pensions costs for more than 13,000 ex-members of the Defence Forces and their dependants.
The €67 million increase in the allocation does not fully describe the increases in defence spending next year. If, as expected, the new pay deal is accepted by unions, it will mean another €47 million on top of the €67 million spent on defence next year. That will give an increase in the overall spend on defence of approximately €114 million in one year, which is more than a 10% increase. By any standards, people would have to accept this as a very significant signal of intent that the Government is serious about implementing the commission's recommendations and, I hope, continuing to increase defence budgets year on year right up to 2028.
I congratulate the Minister on achieving such an important increase in the budget, which it is not easy to do. I hope it is a precedent for further investment in years to come. There is a huge amount of catching up to be done and this level of investment needs to be repeated and accelerated next year and in the years after that. The investment in capital spending is important and long overdue and it must be sustained and further increased. I hope the pay agreement will be completed. I know from speaking to members of the Defence Forces that many are keen to see it concluded and feel it is long overdue.
Will any of the investment we are going to see focus on international co-operation, particularly in regard to protecting our territorial waters?
I welcome the increase in spending. Will the Minister delve a bit more into the capital spend on built infrastructure? In replies to questions prior to the budget, he highlighted a number of issues, including Haulbowline, which he mentioned today, but also, for example, physical training preparation. Second, will there be much or any capital spending on accommodation for members of the Defence Forces, either by way of upgrade or construction of new on-base accommodation?
I will answer Deputy Richmond's second question first. Work being undertaken includes the provision of a new cadet school in the Curragh Camp, the development of the university students administrative complement, USAC, student facility in Galway, the development of a new military medical facility and other facilities to improve Casement Aerodrome, accommodation upgrades in multiple locations throughout the country, such as at Collins and McKee Barracks and at the naval base in Haulbowline. This year, I opened new, modern gym facilities at the barracks in both Limerick and Kilkenny. That is just a flavour of the capital infrastructure investment we are undertaking.
As I said earlier regarding the challenges around recruitment and retention in the Naval Service, we have a capital investment programme that is worth more than €70 million for Haulbowline alone. We opened a refurbished accommodation building of a really high standard there last month, as well as a new jetty facility that has significantly improved the capacity of the naval base. Work will start on two more buildings in the first quarter of next year to upgrade office accommodation and other forms of accommodation in Haulbowline. We are also starting to plan for a new gymnasium there. We know there is a lot of physical infrastructure that needs to be upgraded. I have talked about Haulbowline but I could say the same about the Curragh and many other key barracks around the country.
Regarding funding certainty, the whole point of the commission's report was to set a horizon in the future, set targets as to where we need to be by then and give funding certainty in terms of what is needed to get us there. That is the advantage of having the commission report. We have agreement by way of a Government decision that by 2028, we will have the equivalent spend on defence and military equipment of €1.5 billion in January 2022 value.
In other words, it will have to be linked to military inflation. In my view, by 2028 that will mean a figure close to €2 billion in defence spending, which effectively means increasing it from €1.1 billion to close to €2 billion over a six-year period. That is the kind of certainty the Department of Defence needs and the Defence Forces and their Chief of Staff need in order to be able to plan for an investment programme in subsea capacity and primary radar capacity, to get a multirole vessel into our naval fleet, which will be the largest ever ship we have had in our fleet when it is delivered, and to get new CASA aircraft in the sky, new Mowag Piranha III armoured personnel carriers and whatever else we decide to do. Defence has never had that kind of funding certainty before, but we have it now.
It is vitally important that there is a goal, a target and a roadmap. Again, I congratulate the Minister on his achievement in the budget. That has to be met in future years, whichever parties are in government, because there is a lot of catching up to be done. I welcome the Minister's clarification in relation to the index-linking of expenditure. I have a question coming up shortly on the undersea issue. It is a pressing matter not just in terms of our own security, but the security of the entire Continent. That will have to be prioritised as well.
There will always be incidents that test our systems and capacity. Last year, we were talking about our experience of getting people out of Kabul. People were rightly raising the question of whether we have a medium-range lift capacity in our Defence Forces which would enable them to take people out of a part of the world where we need to get people out quickly, and what we are doing about that. Now we are being asked what our capacity is in terms of monitoring subsea cables, and what we are doing about that. We will also have questions around our capacity in peacekeeping missions in different parts of the world if we are going to move to chapter VII rather than chapter VI missions, which the UN will certainly ask of us, and what we are doing about that in terms of equipment and training. We need to see this as a challenge that we can only respond to over a number of years. That means investing more in defence and being unapologetic and transparent about what that means, rather than pretending that somehow a neutral country does not have to invest in defence or that if there is a conference on technology and military equipment taking place in Ireland, all of a sudden it is somehow some kind of arms conference. It is not. It is about Ireland having a conversation about how we apply the technology and equipment that we need to be able to do all these things in terms of the investment programmes that we have for the Irish Defence Forces in order that they can do their job efficiently in the future.
Departmental Funding
Jim O'Callaghan
Ceist:74. Deputy Jim O'Callaghan asked the Minister for Defence the projects to be financed by the increased defence capital allocation announced in budget 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48994/22]
Sorca Clarke
Ceist:90. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Minister for Defence in view of the increase in capital funding of €35 million in budget 2023, his plans for national security investment under his remit. [49010/22]
The budget last week was a very good one, from the Minister's Department's point of view. I commend the Minister and the Government on increasing funding for the Department. As has been mentioned previously by both Deputies Richmond and Griffin, one of the most positive aspects of that was the increase in capital funding by €35 million, bringing the total capital fund up to €176 million. Noting what the Minister stated in his previous answer, what does he regard as a priority when it comes to investment in capital projects? Although it is a large amount of money, equipment and other things cost vast amounts as well, so we have to choose.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 74 and 90 together.
For 2023, the total allocation for Vote 36 – defence is €893 million, which is an overall increase of €57 million on 2022, doubling the increase for defence from last year. As the Deputy said, the defence capital allocation has increased by €35 million, up to €176 million. In truth, we will spend more than €176 million on capital next year because we will have that €35 million increase and we will also have some unspent moneys in the area of pay which, in all likelihood, will be transferred into capital investment as well. For what it is worth, I expect we will be well above €180 million of capital investment next year. The figure of €176 million represents a 25% increase on 2022. Defence capital investment delivers a significant return in terms of the wider societal impact and reassurance it contributes to overarching national security frameworks.
Among the projects across land, sea and air platforms included in the EDP for progression for next year are the ongoing midlife upgrade of the Army's fleet of Mowag Piranha III armoured personnel carriers; the acquisition of body armour and helmets, along with a range of chemical biological, radiological and nuclear suits; the acquisition of software-defined radio; the development of a primary radar capability, which many people in the House have asked me about, and with which we are moving ahead next year; the continuation of the midlife extension programme works on LÉ Niamh; and the acquisition of two inshore patrol vessels from the New Zealand Government to replace LÉ Orla and LÉ Ciara. One of the attractive elements of these highly efficient and modern vessels is that they require much smaller crews of around 35 rather than 50. We also intend to acquire two Airbus C295 maritime patrol aircraft. There is investment in the Army, Air Corps and Naval Service and a big investment in primary radar capacity. That is the straight answer to the Deputy's question on prioritisation.
I thank the Minister for his answer. I am pleased to hear that there is to be significant investment in capital projects for the Naval Service. As the Minister is aware and as commentary has indicated, it has always been viewed a bit as the Cinderella of the Defence Forces. I like the fact that the Minister may be coming as the Prince Charming to give more money to the Naval Service.
As other Deputies, including Deputy Brady, mentioned, we cannot ignore what happened with the Nord Stream pipelines in the recent past. It is a matter of extreme concern that it appears to be the case that there may be malice behind the damage that was done to the Nord Stream pipeline. If that is going to be a development or practice in international disputes, we need to have a look to see what we can do to ensure we protect our cables and pipelines. That will mean significant investment in the Naval Service. We also need to recognise the jurisdiction in the sea for which Ireland is responsible is about 12 times our landmass. It is no easy task for the Naval Service to be able to do that. What type of equipment will assist the service in policing that large sea area?
What I did not mention previously in terms of capital investment next year was the actual physical build investment in the Defence Forces training camp at the Curragh, the development of a student facility in Galway, along with facilities improvements and accommodation upgrades in multiple different barracks locations. I should mention that.
What happened with Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 is still under investigation. Clearly, those two pipelines have been the source of a lot of political focus in the months since the war began. What we have seen was clearly deliberate sabotage of both pipelines and, from what we can see, it was done by a state actor because we do not believe that a non-state actor would have the capacity to do it. That is worrying. We do not have the full details of that and we probably will not have them for another while. We should not necessarily jump to the conclusion that every piece of cable and pipeline infrastructure in the EU and on the Continent of Europe is at risk. However, we need to be aware of that concern. That is why my Department and the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications have had discussions with each other and with Gas Networks Ireland and EirGrid in relation to that infrastructure and how we may be able to respond to increased security concerns or risks linked to that.
The Minister is echoing the point, in many respects, that was made by the Commission on the Defence Forces in its recent report. It noted that the Naval Service currently does not have the capabilities required to closely monitor activity below the waves. Obviously, that report came out before what appears to have been a malicious attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.
We need to be vigilant and prepared because attacks on cables coming across the Atlantic would have a significant impact not only on the defence of the country but also on our ability to provide services for the large number of commercial activities that operate in this country.
It is going to be difficult to keep up with the demands involved in defending the seas. When it comes to the allocation of capital resources, the Minister should continue to do what he is doing, which is to try to prioritise the Naval Service to ensure our waters are protected in the same way we must protect our landmass.
I am absolutely committed to that. We have a very large sea area at surface level and below, which, as the Deputy said, is more than ten times the size of our land surface. I suspect we are going to build offshore infrastructure worth tens if not hundreds of billions of euro not only to power Ireland but also to power other countries in Europe in the future. We are about to embark on an enormous offshore energy build programme, which, of course, will be an infrastructure we have to ensure is secure and protected in the context of our sovereignty. There is going to be an increasing role for our Naval Service and Air Corps in that regard. There will also, to a certain extent, be a role for the Army. That means a consistent capital programme to invest in new equipment, new technology and more people, which, in turn, means a lot more money. We must get our heads around the fact that every year for the next decade we need to be looking at the kind of increases in defence budget that we have seen this year, or more again. An extra €100 million or more every year is more than justified and required to build up the kind of capacity that the commission has been clear is justified and needed.