Time to trust Defence Forces to command itself, suggests study

The General Staff of the Defence Forces has no real command over the organisation, unlike most other militaries, according to a study published by a Defence Forces officer.

Instead, the Minister for Defence and his civil servants have full command over the Defence Forces' individual formations and are able to bypass military leadership entirely, including Chief of Staff Mark Mellett, it said.

This is contributing to a dysfunctional and sometimes "toxic" relationship between the military and the Department of Defence in the eyes of military representative organisations and retired senior officers.

The study, by Lieutenant Brian Clarke, appeared in the 2020 Defence Forces Review, a yearly journal published by the Defence Forces featuring articles by military personnel and academics.

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It points out the international norm is to have a military officer or group of officers in command of the armed forces on behalf of the Government.

In Ireland, the General Staff's role is limited to "development, military advice to government, strategic planning, and internal administration." In contrast, the department has an "all-encompassing" role including discipline, training, organisation and equipment as well as "all powers, duties and functions connected with the same."

This civilian authority has grown over the decades, with the Department’s secretary general sometimes assuming the powers and duties of the Minister, including attending EU ministerial conferences and overseeing commissioning ceremonies.

“Effectively, the Secretary General of the Department of Defence, an unelected official, can now at times hold de facto command of the Irish Defence Forces,” Lt Clarke wrote.

Ireland also has a much larger civilian military staff than comparable countries, with a ratio of one civil servant for every 23 soldiers. The ratio in Sweden is one to 162 while in Finland it is one to 254.

‘Divisive’

Lt Clarke traces the Irish setup back to independence when the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, fearing mutiny from officers who were formerly in the IRA, established a powerful civilian command structure over the entire Defence Forces.

This has remained largely unchanged over the years. “There is no provision in Irish law for a uniformed Chief of Defence type appointment with nationwide command over the country’s military,” he notes.

Retired generals have criticised the Department’s leadership as being obsessively rigid and inflexible while the Representative Association for Commissioned Officers (RACO) described the relationship between officers and the Department of Defence as “divisive and dismissive.”

A 2017 Workplace Climate Survey by University of Limerick found soldiers of all ranks were concerned about micromanagement and the increasing involvement of civil servants in military operations.

The study’s authors recommended a review of the relationship between the Department and the Defence Forces and a movement towards a “more inclusive partnership”.

“With such levels of criticism for the Department of Defence’s levels of involvement in military affairs, and in lieu of any outstanding arguments in favour of such levels of involvement, the suitability of this model going forward may be questionable,” Lt Clarke wrote.

“Ireland may be ready for a change to its defence governance structures, and may be ready to trust its military with its own full command again,” he suggested.

“The alternative is to continue into an uncertain global security environment with a largely criticised paradigm of governance that is far outside of standard international practice.”