FIANNA FAIL has accused the Government of "stalling deliberately" the publication of its consultancy review of the Naval Service and Air Corps until after the next election.
The Government was "playing around with State security," the Fianna Fail defence spokesman, Mr Michael Smith, said.
The two month delay in the Price Waterhouse study was "tantamount to lowering Defence Force morale to a dangerous level," he said yesterday.
It is now fairly clear that there will be no draft report until after the election," Mr Smith said. "I am calling on the Minister for Defence, Mr Barrett, to deal with this urgent matter in a meaningful and positive way.
The Minister is expected to come under pressure from naval and Air Corps officers at a conference in Newbridge, Co Kildare, today over the further delay in the consultancy review of the two defence wings.
The Taoiseach's Department said yesterday that the draft Price Waterhouse review would not be ready before the middle of next month. The original deadline announced by the Minister for Defence was the end of November last year.
Commdt Brian O'Keeffe, general secretary of the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers (RACO), described the delay as "inexplicable". It had contributed to falling morale, and had caused "a lot of anxiety" within the forces.
The separate studies of the two wings were commissioned last summer under the auspices of the Government's Efficiency Audit Group (EAG) review of Defence Forces.
The original Price Waterhouse study of 1994 on the Defence Forces had proposed reducing Naval Service staff from about 1,080 to 1,000 - a move which (could have tied up at least two ships, according to the representative organisations.
A strong case was made by the organisations to Government that the 1994 study did not address the particular situation of the marine and air wings, given the increased demands of fishery protection and drug interdiction duties.
Following the Minister's absence from the organisation's annual delegate conference in Galway last year, the Department of Defence had indicated he would attend today's special meeting, and invite public debate on the content of the special review. The Minister had been forced to cancel his attendance then due to a Dail confidence vote.
However, his Department was confident then that it would receive the Price Waterhouse study before Christmas.
