The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, is to sell off 100 houses in the Army's married quarters in the Curragh Camp, offering the houses to the tenants at discounted prices.
Mr Smith revealed details of the sale to members of the Dail Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights as part of the debate on estimates for Defence and Army pensions.
During his speech Mr Smith reiterated his welcome of the recent High Court judgment endorsing the State's "Green Book" guidelines on hearing damage and the consequent reduction in compensation payments to soldiers claiming damages. He said that based on the latest payments made by the courts it was still anticipated the State would face a bill of £200 million for damages. However, his Department had set aside £79 million for hearing payments this year and so far it had paid out only £9 million, mainly because of delays to hearings while the Department mounted its legal challenge to establish the Green Book guidelines.
The Minister said it was difficult to estimate how much more would be paid out in compensation this year. He hoped soldiers would agree to the establishment of a compensation board which, he said, would speed up payments to claimants so long as they agreed to the reduced levels of damages.
Referring to the proposed sale of the Army "married quarters" in the Curragh, Mr Smith said these were largely an anachronism. The Defence Forces should be treated on an equal footing with other members of society and encouraged to acquire their own houses. It is hoped the sale of the houses at Orchard Park, on the outskirts of the main military base, will raise over £2 million towards the Defence budget.
Up to 200 assorted houses and other parcels of property, outside military camps, had already been disposed of in recent years but this was the first time actual quarters had been sold off. The houses in Orchard Park have been occupied by soldiers and their families since the foundation of the State. The move follows a trend in other European defence forces. In recent years the British army sold off 69,000 married quarters houses in or near military camps to a Japanese bank. Many of the houses were then leased back by the British Ministry of Defence.
Mr Smith said the houses in Orchard Park had previously been exempt from the property disposal programme in the Defence Forces but he had decided to give their occupants the opportunity to purchase them on the same basis as applied to local authority tenants.
Yesterday, the soldiers' staff association, the Permanent Defence Forces Other Ranks Representative Association (PDFORRA) again criticised Mr Smith over his decision that the hearing compensation costs would have to be met by cuts in the Defence budget. Senior Government sources indicated that such cuts would probably include the closure of some of the Defence Forces' 34 barracks.
PDFORRA's general secretary, Mr John Lucey, challenged the Minister to a television debate, saying: "It is a contradiction and gross injustice to accept responsibility for the negligence which led to the litigation bill by proposing a non-adversarial compensation mechanism instead of the courts and at the same time indicating that there would be economies in the Defence budget which would probably lead to job cuts, the reintroduction of barrack closures along with severe curtailment in the purchase of badly-needed equipment."