THE Government has decided that only half the money saved from the voluntary redundancies of 1,500 Defence Force members will be returned on capital expenditure for the military.
The Minister for Defence and the Marine, Mr Barrett, yesterday revealed that 50 per cent of the savings would go to the central Exchequer and half would be spent on the Defence Forces.
He said agreement on this format had been reached only recently. There had been an expectation among the Defence Forces that the entire savings would be ploughed back into capital spending on equipment.
The amount of savings is not known and the 50-50 arrangement will not come into place until 1999 when the last of the voluntary "early retirements" take place. The Defence Forces is being reduced from a strength of 13,000 to 11,500 over this period.
Mr Barrett, who was speaking at his last official function as Minister when he reviewed troops leaving for duty with the NATO-led stability force (Sfor) in former Yugoslavia, pointed out that a £30 million building programme was under way to upgrade barracks and military infrastructure.
He repeated his view that the Defence Force's participation in Sfor did not effect the State's stance on neutrality and pointed out that Sfor was acting on a United Nations mandate.