Navy has fewer staff to run more vessels

Figures provided to the Irish Examiner show why the Naval Service is suffering a manpower crisis. This will worsen unless the service can stem the exodus of experienced personnel leaving because of poor pay and conditions.

Twenty years ago, a PwC review of Naval Service operations/manpower concluded that it needed 1,144 personnel to man a seven-ship fleet.

At the time, the navy was expecting the arrival of LÉ Róisín. Military top brass decided not to decommission an older vessel and, instead, went to an eight-ship fleet when LÉ Róisín arrived, doing so with the same number of personnel.

Ten years ago, the Employment Control Framework decided that 50 positions in the Naval Service should be terminated, which reduced its strength to 1,094.

A Naval Service working group subsequently identified that 1,144 personnel were the minimum required to run an eight-ship fleet, but its findings were never implemented.

There are currently eight ships operational and the new €70m LÉ George Bernard Shaw has just been delivered to the navy after undergoing successful sea trials.

No decision has yet been made on whether to decommission one of the coastal patrol vessels, LÉ Orla and LÉ Ciara, which were purchased in 1988.

If there is no decommissioning, it will become a nine-ship naval service and plans are in train to purchase a new €200m multi-role vessel (MRV), which will replace the aging flagship, LÉ Eithne. Two-hundred personnel are undergoing training at any given time at the National Maritime College.

According to well-placed sources, only a handful of these could be taken off the training programme to man ships at sea.

So that leaves just over 700 personnel providing shore-based support and crews for the ships both patrolling Irish waters and on anti-people-smuggling (Operation Sophia) operations in the Mediterranean.

The numbers who can go to sea are further reduced by the fact that only 16% of senior officers have sea-going appointments, with the rest of them tied up on operational support duties ashore.

The gaps are even being plugged by reservists and by regulars having to work longer periods without leave.

Meanwhile, more is being demanded of those left serving, because the Naval Service is having a huge problem with recruitment.

For the last recruitment class intake, which took place in June, 65 people were called for medical/fitness tests at the naval base.

However, only six turned up.

The latest round of applications for Naval Service recruitment has just closed and there are fears interest in joining up could be even lower.

PDForra members spoke, at the group’s recent annual conference, of personnel suffering from sleep-deprivation and enormous stress levels, because of extra workloads caused by the manpower crisis.

They also said the rush to get ships out to sea was a major health-and-safety problem.

One delegate said a ship sailed even though it had scaffolding still around its engine.