PDforra conference:The recruitment of an additional 1,000 personnel to the Defence Forces to assist Ireland's greater role in international peacekeeping will be considered, Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea has said.
It has also emerged that the Army's elite Ranger wing is being readied to be sent to Chad and the Central African Republic when a reconnaissance party, which is leaving Ireland for the region today, reports back.
Mr O'Dea made his comments regarding extra troops on foot of a suggestion by PDforra, the Defence Forces staff representative association, that the current combined strength of the Army, Naval Service and Air Corps of 10,500 should be increased to 11,500.
He was speaking at the PDforra annual conference in Tralee, Co Kerry.
Association president Willie Webb said the additional personnel were needed, given the Government's commitment to send up to 400 troops on the United Nations mission to Chad, Ireland's participation in the new EU battle groups and its ongoing deployment in Kosovo.
Mr O'Dea said the current size of the Defence Forces, with 10,500 full-time members and 350 in training, had been agreed under the current defence White Paper which runs until 2010.
"Certainly our overseas commitments are growing. We have committed ourselves up to 850 troops abroad at any one time.
"In order to increase that figure we'd probably need a bigger army.
"But the present strength is what has been agreed. We'll be doing a new White Paper to cover the next 10-year period; we'll look at all those issues then."
The Nordic battle group of which Ireland is a member will hold a training exercise in Sweden in coming weeks.
From January about 100 Irish personnel will be on standby for six months to be rapidly deployed to any conflict zone.
Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lieut-Gen Dermot Earley told delegates the Army's Ranger wing was already on standby to be among the first Irish troops on the ground in Chad.
He said the first full deployment of Irish troops would be in Chad in coming weeks, subject to Government approval following the reconnaissance mission.
Lieut-Gen Earley and Mr O'Dea said the troops would be able to call on state-of-the-art medical back-up while in the region. PDforra general secretary Gerry Rooney warned that the 350 to 400 troops to be deployed will be "far removed from the kind of support we have grown accustomed to on other EU missions".
Responding to claims by PDforra that its representatives were being victimised because of their work with the association, Lieut-Gen Earley said if cases were brought to his attention he would deal with them.
Mr Rooney told the conference the victimisation was unacceptable.
He also said efforts by the association to establish a complaints mechanism involving itself and the Department of Defence, rather than a complainant's commanding officer, had failed.
However, Lieut-Gen Earley said sufficient mechanisms, including the Defence Forces Ombudsman, were already in place.
He said he had told his senior officers to be fair to their charges.