Soaring sick leave crisis for the military
JOINING AN ELITE CLUB
SICK leave in the Air Corps is now above the national average, as the Defence Forces struggle to retain and recruit staff.
Figures obtained by the Irish Mail on Sunday show 6,889 sick days were taken by some 720 personnel in the Air Corps to date this year, a rate of 9.56 days per member.
This is higher than the number of sick leave days in the Naval Service and the Army, which have an average of 5.18 and 7.6 sick days per staff member respectively.
The national average risk for sick leave in the public sector last year was 8.8 working days.
Up to October 23 last, the most recent available figures, a total of 67,551 sick leave days have been taken by all members of the Defence Forces.
If this trend continues to year end, the total figure could surpass 80,000, the highest witnessed in the force in years.
Deputy General Secretary, Lt Col Derek Priestley of the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers (Raco), told the MoS that it had been ‘a significant achievement’ to keep the rate of sick leave below the public sector average, given the ‘robust nature of military training and operations’.
The strength of Defence Forces should be 9,500 personnel, but it is now below 9,000, even with hundreds of new recruits inducted this year. Lieut. Col Priestly said: ‘There are large numbers leaving for better terms and conditions elsewhere, and there continues to be a dysfunctional turnover in Defence Forces.’
He said figures presented in the Dáil, purporting to show personnel levels had stabilised, obscured the crisis given that ‘at any given time you could have one thousand people receiving training, other people tied up in providing training, and another 600 stationed overseas.’
‘We simply don’t have the level of trained personnel we should have. Naturally, if you are down 20-30% of your pilots, the burden is picked up by the other 70% and they certainly feel that, no doubt about it.’
Both Raco, which represents 1,100 management members of the Defence Forces, and PDForra, which represents 6,000 troops, have repeatedly said it is unacceptable’ that soldiers, sailors and air crews are still not subject to the EU Working Time Directive. More than 30 personnel are taking High Court cases over being unable to claim annual leave.