Naval Service `withering on vine'

The Department of Defence is deliberately allowing the Naval Service to "wither on the vine", Mr Michael Martin, an ex-naval warrant officer and founder member of PDFORRA, has said.

Mr Martin, who now runs a bookshop in Cobh, Co Cork, quit the service in February after 23 years. A founder and former general secretary of PDFORRA, he believes the current Department of Defence secretariat treats military representative organisations "with contempt".

Mr Martin was the most senior ranking NCO in charge of the Naval Service engineering branch when he retired this year. He rose to national prominence almost a decade ago when he sought an interlocutory injunction to prevent the Minister for Defence charging him over his decision to speak to the press.

Following the legal action, the Government permitted the establishment of the State's first representative organisation within the Defence Forces.

The abandonment of an independent chair for the Price Waterhouse review was symptomatic of continued delaying tactics by the Department of Defence, which had no interest in expanding the Naval Service, Mr Martin said.

He said he had participated in submissions dating from the Gleeson Commission to the Price Waterhouse review, and questioned the whole commitment to consultation.

"These reports by consultants will be cherry-picked, and there will be no Naval Service in eight years' time," he said yesterday. "There will be a small civilian-orientated group carrying out fisheries protection, without anything like the resources needed to patrol a sea area four times the land size of Ireland."

The full scale of the task involved in drug interdiction, pollution control and search and rescue was not appreciated, he said, comparing existing Naval Service resources in the 132,000 square mile exclusive economic zone to the equivalent of two Garda patrol cars for the whole 26 counties.

"I was involved in responses to sea accidents like the Kowloon Bridge and the Betelgeuse, with drug interdiction and anti-terrorist activities that were never reported. There is a highly trained and disciplined force there, which is now suffering from complete lack of morale and direction.

"All it needs is one big accident offshore," Mr Martin predicted. "And then you can be sure that there will be recriminations. And it will be the head of the Minister for Defence that people will be looking for, not those ultimately responsible in the Department secretariat."