An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir July / August 2023 www.military.ie/magazine 10 | tolerate any incidents of inappropriate behaviour. The IRG report may impact on recruitment, and when the tribunal is established, that may bring more incidents out into the public domain that may have an impact. But we've had ver y positive indications with regard to our recruitment campaign, even since the publication of the report. This year we established a new Joint Induction Training Centre ( JITC) in Gormanston Camp where 60 recruits started training in April of this year, the week after the report was published. We have had more recruits starting throughout the summer and also later on in the year with females as part of those platoons. We also have a cadet competition ongoing. There has been a strong number of applications from females as well as males. Why should anyone join, and women in particular? The Defence Forces is a wonderful organisation, with really fulfilling career opportunities. Our recruitment campaign at the moment is around the message - BE MORE. You can join the Defence Forces and be given ever y opportunity that you want to take to better yourself, to better your countr y, to better your family, to better your own life. You can get educated right the way up through to Masters level, with plenty of challenges and opportunities to demonstrate your leadership potential. It's an excellent career. I've no doubt that as an organisation we will come through this particular challenge, and it is a huge challenge for us. But we see the report as an opportunity to make ourselves better, to make ourselves more transparent, so that our personnel have trust in the organisation and that they feel valued within the organisation. This will help retention of our personnel. Sir, what will the role of the OCSC be going forward? There are a number of areas that I didn't mention regarding the work of the OCSC. It talks about a range of recommendations around training, and raising cultural awareness in the organisation. I already mentioned the SERR Workshop that we designed ourselves, and UCC will deliver. Those workshops will continue for the foreseeable future and we'll have to engage with the EOB and make sure that they 're fully briefed on our plans in this regard. And there's a range of other areas that we've also initiated. We want to ensure that ever y individual is aware, either on the CONNECT app or from posters in various locations, that if you do experience something, that you're able to reach out to the ser vices available and access them. The work of the OCSC will continue for the foreseeable future. We will also have to sit down with the new Head of Strategic HR when he commences in September and see what the areas of overlap are. The benefit that we can bring to the Head of HR is that the OCSC committee is a ver y diverse group, across all the ser vices and formations and we can bring a huge amount of information from the ground up as to the issues and where change is being seen or not being seen. The OCSC also have a role in regard to future sur veys, future audits examining if the negative aspects of our culture are changing. Sir, what is your vision for the culture of the DF in the future? My vision is for a stronger Defence Forces where all of our personnel are treated first of all with equity, dignity and respect; and where our diversity makes us more operationally effective. That's it in a nutshell. So how does that vision come about? What we know we need to do is to change what some saw as acceptable behaviours of the past and clearly identif y to all that these are not acceptable. People need to see visible champions out there. This isn't just coming from the top down. This has to come from the person who's sitting beside you on the APC, on the ship or in a hangar in the Air Corps. It's your friends, it's your peers, it's those above you and it's those below you. If someone sees inappropriate behaviour, they have to stand up to it. I think what we'll see in the immediate future is a spike in the number of cases of inappropriate behaviour being reported. That's positive, which may seem counterintuitive, but it is a positive because it means people now trust that if they bring something forward, it will be dealt with swiftly, appropriately, and there'll be no reprisals for it. If you see something inappropriate, you have to call it out, that's fundamental. Hopefully we'll also see a significant increase in the number of females ser ving in the DF. The target from the Commission on the Defence Forces is over 30% of females ser ving, which is highly ambitious when you look at other militaries around the world. But we certainly need to get way beyond 7%. That will make a significant difference to our operational effectiveness. It'll make for better decision making and it will bring equity, dignity and balance across the entire organisation. Ultimately what we want to see, is the Defence Forces being an exemplar in society and in the public sector. We're always at the vanguard of making change, of leading change. We're not afraid of change. And when we do take on something, we always address it wholeheartedly in a ver y honest, open and transparent way. And if we do that in this instance, I think we will be seen as exemplars of being open to change, being able to change and delivering on change as well. And we will be a stronger Defence Forces. DF members receiving Gender, Diversity & Unconscious Bias Training Here is a link explaining the introduction of Sexual Ethics and Respectful Relationship training for Defence Force members.

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