The body representing commissioned officers in the Defence Forces has urged the Government to establish the terms of reference for a review of the hours that army, navy and air corps personnel have to serve.
The Representative Association for Commissioned Officers (Raco) has been lobbying for the Government to establish the terms of a review to see how the European Court of Justice working time directive governing working hours might apply to the Defence Forces.
Raco, which represents approximately 1,150 commissioned officers, says the Defence Forces currently enjoys a blanket exemption from the directive, which recommends an average working week of 48 hours on health and safety grounds.
But speaking in Cork where Raco is holding its AGM, general secretary Lt Col Earnán Naughton said that while the organisation welcomed a Government statement of intent to implement the working time directive, it needed to see tangible progress on the terms of reference which would allow negotiations begin.
He pointed out that the European Court of Justice made the ruling regarding the Irish Defence Forces in 2010 that it should not be excluded by a blanket exemption from the working time directive. Raco had engaged with management to try and see how this could be implemented in a practical way.
“The first thing we need to do is get to the table with terms of reference from where we will start a complete analysis of our taskings, the requirements personnel wise, where we fall inside and outside of the working time directive and how best to address that within the resources we have,” he said.
European experience
The Swedish and German armed forces have both adapted their practices to the working time directive where the hours worked by officers are assessed over a three month period and if they have exceeded the weekly 48 hour limit, they get compensatory time off at the end of the three months.
Lt Col Naughton said that the legislation governing working times was health and safety rather than employment legislation and an audit of Defence Forces activities revealed that many practices fell outside the scope of the directive with personnel working more than 48 hours a week.
He instanced the case of an officer in charge of a bomb disposal unit who was on call for periods of 72 hours at a time, or officers on the watch in the Naval Service while on patrol who would also work for periods of 63 hours at a time, which again was far in excess of the 48 hour limit recommended in the ruling.
He said that while Raco fully accepted the need for the Defence Forces to respond to exceptional circumstances in a manner not governed by the directive, it could be applied to many routine and normal duties once there was proper planning and forecasting of tasks.
Lt Col Naughton said a University of Limerick report on the Defence Forces in 2017 found the demands associated with the work-life balance along with pay issues was one of the major causes of personnel leaving the Defence Forces across all ranks. And he suggested that the work-life balance and the hours officers were expected to work was an even critical factor among commissioned officers who were currently leaving the Defence Forces at a rate of approximately 75-85 per year resulting in a huge loss of highly valuable, experienced personnel.
“We must not compromise our ability to respond to exceptional circumstances as required because of the working time directive but likewise it doesn’t obfuscate the requirement of management during normal predictable duties to plan within the framework of the manning hours,” he said.
The Department of Defence said it and the Defence Forces had completed a study of the implications of the directive for the Defence Forces and together with military management, it was engaging with the representative associations on the matter under the conciliation and arbitration scheme.
