Military officers sue State over working hours

Military officers are suing the State over their working hours, it has emerged.

It is understood personnel serving in the Army, Naval Service and Air Corps across a number of disciplines have initiated legal action seeking the immediate implementation of the European working time directive in the Defence Forces.

The organisation representing military officers, Raco, said on Wednesday that Minister for Defence Simon Coveney and the Department of Defence had been put on notice that the legal action by officers had commenced.

In a statement to the Oireachtas committee on foreign affairs and defence earlier this week, Raco said that the working time directive's health and safety provisions set out limits on the number of continuous hours employees could work over certain periods.

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“It is clear that in the current environment, the Defence Forces cannot meet the requirements of the directive and maintain its operational outputs. What is equally clear is that a failure to provide adequate rest and compensatory time off to military personnel is significantly impacting their home life and the ability of many to maintain a career in the Defence Forces.

“For too long management has treated members’ time as an infinite resource, without consideration of work-life balance, and the fact that our organisation has never even recorded working time, in contravention of EU law, has denied our members access to benefits such as overtime which are available to other public sector employees.”

Raco argued that the current strength of the Defence Forces was well below the minimum establishment level.

It maintained that implementation of the working time directive would reveal “just how inadequate that establishment actually is”.

Raco said it had attempted to seek engagement on the implementation of the directive with civil and military management in a reasonable and collaborative manner through the Conciliation and Arbitration Scheme for many years without success.