‘ Wait til a bomb goes off on O’Connell Street...’
HELL WEEK STAR’S SECURITY FEAR
‘ELITE ARMY RANGERS QUITTING ABOUT PAY’
THE star of RTE’s Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week has blasted the Government for neglecting the elite Army Ranger Wing.
“The Government won’t give them anything,” former Ranger Wing operator Ray Goggins told The Star in an explosive interview.
And Mr Goggins says he would have stayed on in the unit if he had been paid properly — rather than quitting for the lucrative private security industry.
Mr Goggins also tells The Star he is worried that current ARW personnel may leave the elite fighting unit because the pay is so bad.
“Pay the Ranger Wing the money they deserve, or they won’t have a special forces unit. I know they think, ‘Ah sure what do they do anyway’, but when there is none there, then they will see the difference,” he says.
Cork-born Mr Goggins (50) has just written a best-selling book called Ranger 22 that details his 17 years in the ARW as well as his next career as a private security consultant, but he admits he has secrets that he will never tell from his time in the Defence Forces’ elite unit.
“I am not giving away any big secrets in the book and any operational security issues that I can’t mention are obviously left out,” he says.
“I swore to protect the State, whatever that meant, and if that meant keeping my mouth shut about certain things, that is all part of the game.
“I was never going to be singing about this operation that happened or that black operation. I can’t mention them.
Honour
“I very much consider it a point of honour with the guys I served with, not the Chief of Staff or the Government, it’s for the guys I stood shoulder to shoulder with all those years.
“We have this code that you live by, it might sound ridiculous or something out of a movie, but that is the way it is.”
Mr Goggins does open up, however, about his anger at the way the ARW has been treated by successive governments, who he says have repeatedly neglected the unit he served with in East Timor, Chad and Liberia.
He and dozens of other members of the unit were supposed to have received €60 extra a week backdated to 2006, which would mean up to €40,000 for him and his former colleagues — but none of them have got a cent of that cash.
And Mr Goggins, who left the ARW in late 2015, told The Star he simply could not afford to stay in the unit.
He says: “I’ll be honest. If we had got that back pay and we had got this that and the other, I would probably still be there. I left the Ranger wing for loads of reasons — the financial pitfalls was a large part of it.
“I’m coming home and we can’t get a babysitter to go out for a meal or a drink because we haven’t got the money to do it. I couldn’t do that anymore. As hard a decision as it was, I decided to leave.”
He added: “The guys still serving are forgotten about by the Government. They are not supported, they are not protected.
“They will give their lives to protect people in this country whether they are in the country or elsewhere — Irish citizens and other nationalities, they will give their lives without thinking about it.
Commitment
“But the Government won’t give them anything. They don’t even understand what commitment these guys have and what they do on a daily basis to help keep this country secure.
“It is common knowledge the way the Ranger Wing has been undervalued, under-supported, underpaid.
“This isn’t a failure of one government — this
is going back so many years.
“They do not care about defence. They think it is a Mickey Mouse thing. That’s all well and good until the first bomb goes off on O’Connell Street, or some attack on the LUAS.
“I am not saying it is going to happen, but you cannot tell me it is not.”
Mr Goggins says he fears the low pay and conditions in the ARW will drive many of the elite fighters into the more lucrative private security industry, and leave Ireland even more exposed.
He says: “If you don’t look after that like any HR issue, people are going to look elsewhere.
“Guys can only take the hit for so long. “I’m not saying they need to be paid millions, but for God’s sake give fellas at least something that they can fall back on, that they can pursue their career effectively and not have to worry about what is going on at home when they are away.
“If you are away on an operation, you do not need to be worrying about what is going on at home because then you are not present, you are not in the zone and that is when people get hurt, that is when things go wrong.”
He adds it is vital to keep the highly trained soldiers in the ARW, or they will be tempted by better money on the outside.
He says: “They need to keep these guys in. These guys are hard to get in, they are hard to train and they are even harder to keep. Unfortunately, the private i t sector t is i a massive i draw d now. COVID locked everything down. Once movement starts again, the private protection companies are going to be looking for operators that are well trained.
Skilled
“They know guys that come from the Ranger Wing, they know what they get — they don’t have to worry.
“Not only will they get a skilled operator, they will get a guy who can actually think on his feet and isn’t just an assault moron. He can deal with people.
He H can t talk lk t to people l as well ll as bi being aggressive.
“You get the wrong fellas taken out and your ability to train and build guys up is gone.”
Mr Goggins also attacked the lack of airlift capability in the Defence Forces, which became apparent in last month’s ARW mission to Kabul to rescue stranded Irish citizens.
The Air Corps has no planes capable of ferrying the Irish citizens out of Kabul, so we had to beg for lifts off other nations.