O'Dea criticises poor response to Army drive

The Irish Countrywomen's Association (ICA) is the only organisation to come up with concrete measures for encouraging women to join the Defence Forces, according to Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea.

Neither Pdforra nor Raco, the soldiers' and officers' representative organisations have even replied to the Department of Defence request a year ago for proposals, he told the Dáil.

"We invited submissions from Pdforra and Raco and we haven't heard from either of them yet," said the Minister.

It emerged that the Defence Forces organisations were the only bodies not to reply to the department, which had written to "a whole list of organisations" seeking their views on measures that could be taken to encourage women into the Army.

"Apart from Pdforra and Raco most of the people we wrote to responded, but the responses didn't advance the case to any degree," said Mr O'Dea.

"I'm very disappointed with the response because the only people we got back concrete proposals from were the ICA, believe it or not. We got back loads of good wishes and 'well done'," he said. "The general tone of the response from the other groups we wrote to was 'good on you', 'fair play' 'great idea' but no concrete suggestions or proposals".

There are 545 women in the permanent Defence Forces compared 9,837 men, about 6 per cent. But there are far more women in the Reserve Defence Forces, 2,433 compared to 7,141 men.

The Minister who last month reduced the height requirement from 162.56cm to 157.48cm to encourage female recruits, said that it was "too early to gauge whether there has been a corresponding increase in the number of female applicants".

He said that "only 60 per cent of females over 18 years, were eligible to apply because of the height requirement of 5 feet 4 inches. That has been increased to 90 per cent with the height reduction." Mr O'Dea has now commissioned TNSmrbi to research the issue of recruiting and keeping women in the Defence Forces, which will include interviews with serving and former female personnel, as well as non military women.

Mr O'Dea believed there were "certain misunderstandings" among the female population about life in the Army. He said that "last year about 9.5 per cent of those who applied for the Permanent Defence Forces were female and 10.5 per cent of the recruits taken on were female. So the amount being recruited is almost directly proportional to the numbers applying."

Fine Gael's spokesman Billy Timmins said: "We have expertise in all these various areas and organisations and the State has to go out and spend funding, commissioning a survey when the information could have been forthcoming if some of these departments had bothered to respond" The Minister said they would have commissioned research anyway, regardless of the responses they got.

Labour spokesman Joe Costello pointed out that five times the number of women were signing up for the reserve than the Permanent Defence Forces. "Then it would seem that the causes why women are not joining the Permanent Defence Forces are much deeper than the simple issue of height, that there must be serious matters that make the Army not an attractive option for women."