Sir, - From the general media coverage of the Defence White Paper, it might reasonably be assumed that interest in this matter is confined to those most affected by it: the members of the Defence Forces and their immediate dependants. However, in common with your columnist Kevin Myers, I believe that this is not so and that the apparent public disinterest in the subject is due largely to a failure to appreciate the pernicious results of the implementation of this document on an important national institution.
Admittedly, public esteem for the Defence Forces has been seriously eroded by the "Army deafness" and associated compensation claims, even though the true blame for these must lie with those responsible for failing to ensure that normal industrial standards of hearing protection were for so long not applied to a sector of society particularly vulnerable to hearing damage. In this, however, the Defence authorities were by no means alone - the construction industry, of which the writer has intimate knowledge, particularly springs to mind.
This should not blind us to the importance of the Defence Forces, not merely as an instrument of national sovereignty and the guarantor of our democratic institutions, but also as an important pool of resources in the event of environmental catastrophe or the abuse of the power of organised labour in areas of vital national and social importance.
As Mr Myers correctly points out in your edition of February 12th, the report of the Defence Forces efficiency study, commissioned at considerable expense to the taxpayer, underlined that its findings were an indivisible whole. The Minister for Defence (presumably on the advice of his bloated bureaucracy, the members of which, as Kevin Myers points out, would appear to have an individual efficiency factor of about 5 per cent visa-vis their Danish counterparts) has nevertheless chosen to "cherry-pick" among the recommendations of this report, adopting its cost-saving elements but largely ignoring its recommendations on increased efficiency and improved equipment. In this he confuses "economy" (the most effective use of available resources) with cost-saving.
The principle of collective Cabinet responsibility might make it seem unreasonable to single out the Minister for selective blame in this respect were it not that political parties, including many of his own backbenchers and his PD coalition colleagues, have been swingeing in their criticism of the bulk of the White Paper's proposals. Mr Smith's arrogance in dismissing criticism was all too apparent in his appearance in RTE1's The Week In Politics programme on February 13th, when he dismissed the impact of the possible resignation of senior members of the Defence hierarchy on his determination virtually to emasculate this country's Defence Forces.
As a Minister he has already presided over the near dismantling of our maritime search and rescue facilities and, despite very recent demonstrations of the vulnerability of our coastline to pollution, has simultaneously ignored the recommendations of the Defence Efficiency Audit Report on Naval Service equipment.
He might well reconsider his own position before implementing proposals for which he will be damned by future generations. - Yours, etc.,
Adrian J. English, Kilcolman Court, Glenageary, Co Dublin.