The Defence Forces is facing a \u201clooming retention crisis\u201d over changes made for new recruits in 2013, which removed a supplementary pension between retirement age and State pension age.<\/p>\n
The annual conference of the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers (Raco) heard that in the first class of recruits in 2013, more than 50% have left the organisation after serving 12 years \u2014 with the pension problem cited as the reason.<\/p>\n
Raco president Lieutenant Colonel Martin Ryan strongly criticised the \u201chead-in-the-sand\u201d approach of military management and Government departments on the issue.<\/p>\n
The association\u2019s annual delegate conference, in Trim, Co Meath, heard a series of speeches from young officers calling for the previous entitlement of the supplementary provision \u2014 removed from 2013 \u2014 to be reinstated.<\/p>\n
Lieutenant Elina Mats of the 1 Brigade said the new pension system \u201cundermines recruitment and retention\u201d and creates a situation where people are doing the same work, but entitled to \u201cvastly different\u201d pensions.<\/p>\n
She said the military presents unique demands of members, including overseas deployments and protracted separation from family, which the supplementary pension recognised.<\/p>\n
She said more than 50% of the post-2013 recruits had so far left to take up civilian employment.<\/p>\n
Captain Philip Dowling of the 1 Brigade said he entered in 2013 and that of his class, 11 had left and only nine remained.<\/p>\n
He said if this was not addressed it would continue.<\/p>\n
Captain David Sutton of the Naval Service said there was an \u201cimpending crisis\u201d facing the organisation as more officers leave as they age.<\/p>\n
He said when officers retire, their State pension of \u20ac15,500 would be \u201ctaken away\u201d from their pension, until they reach State retirement age of 66.<\/p>\n
Lt Col Ryan said this was a recurring motion at conference and there was now a realisation from the first class post-2013: \u201cIt is trending one way, there is a retention crisis and a head-in-the-sand approach by military management and political masters. Recruitment can\u2019t solve all issues and currently it’s very difficult to encourage post-2013 recruits to remain at the job.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said many would leave well before they near the age of 62, when they must retire, in order to have some prospects of getting a private sector job.<\/p>\n
On a separate issue, Captain Stephen Shannon of the air corps committee said young pilots are on low pay and allowances in the first years of their training \u2014 a situation that only changes in the last year of their 12-year contract.<\/p>\n
He said in recent years there had been an increase in the \u201coperational tempo\u201d of the air corps not least in the maritime security environment and in the Lebanon.<\/p>\n
He said Beirut was like a \u201ccommuter service\u201d in recent times such is the number of flights there and back.<\/p>\n
With Ireland\u2019s presidency of the EU, he said almost the entire fleet of the air corps is flying for the defence and foreign affairs meetings at Druids Glen, Co Wicklow \u2014 something, he said, he had never seen before.<\/p>\n
The conference heard a young pilot could be a mission commander for a cash escort carrying \u20ac15m and be in receipt of a \u20ac3,190 annual allowance, less than the allowance for a member with a foreign language professional allowance.<\/p>\n
Cormac O\u2019Keeffe, security correspondent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Defence Forces is facing a \u201clooming retention crisis\u201d over changes made for new recruits in 2013, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,13308,176,61,60,174,175],"class_list":["post-661266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-defence-forces","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}