Rose Conway-Walsh on maintenance outsourcing and SME capacity

Can I just ask you, just in terms of the reporting to the Comptroller and Auditor General, are full details of the contracts disclosed to the Comptroller and Auditor General? Yes, they are, yes, but they actually have a particular security arrangement across all government departments. They can ask anything, they can see everything, we disclose things to them. But there's a different level of engagement there. But it is reported to the Comptroller? Of course, yes, but when they report, they don't report in detail in relation to technical aspects or operational aspects of equipment. But the Comptroller and Auditor General can raise questions or whatever wrong information that's given to them. And just in terms of engaging with the SMEs, before I go back to Deputy Callaghan, does that include SMEs in the North, or what's your relationship there in terms of of our building the capacities of the SMEs across the island, or is it just confined to this? At the moment, so we've only set up the unit in the last year or so, so at the moment it's focusing on SMEs in the South, but I do know that the Chair of the equivalent of Enterprise Ireland in the North, we were actually due to meet him shortly because he's sort of interested in that cross-border, so we're just sort of starting to look at that now, but at the moment we've been just engaging with people in the North. Okay, that will happen. And just on the other thing, how much are we outsourcing at the moment for training and maintenance? I wouldn't have those figures. Say, for example, take the Air Corps, we would have engaged external companies to help us with the maintenance because our technicians are down to around 50% of what they should be, so there's right across all the different subheads, as I would say, there'd be different amounts. There isn't just one figure that I could quote you to say what the cost of outsourcing is. And can I just maybe just add to that, if you don't mind, Chair, just in relation to the actual maintenance of aircraft, obviously you have technicians on the ground and that, but a lot of the actual technology as well is the actual original manufacturer. You'll actually have seen figures there in relation to maintenance costs. There are arrangements in relation to who actually does the engines or different avionics or, for example, for the C295 platform, there's a specific maintenance arrangement there. Now, there is some maintenance done in Ireland, but there's actually other arrangements there in relation to that. That's because the actual equipment is so complex, so it is as well, and there's actually thousands of suppliers and thousands of subcomponents that we would not actually be able to manage that if we were to actually do that ourselves. So there's actually quite a robust arrangement in place. And when we went to the market, it was something that we actually assessed as well when we actually went to the market to make sure that we got a good value for money in respect of that as well. So it would be interesting just to see, I suppose what I'm trying to get at is, are we building up our own capacity where we possibly can in terms of the expertise that's needed in that area? Yeah, and I mean, we are, but obviously we've had recruitment and retention issues over the years, and that's particularly impacted on our technicians, say from the Air Corps and the Naval Service. So absolutely trying to, as part of, we have our force design, we have a strategic workforce plan, which is trying to see how we can get from where we are now to the 11,500. So we're absolutely trying to build that up. And you're probably aware of all the initiatives that are out there in terms of recruitment and retention. So we are trying to build that capacity back up inside, but just where we are at the moment has necessitated that we would get external contractors to help us with some of the maintenance. Just think it's important to do that, particularly in the current climate where we have rising youth unemployment and where many graduates are leaving third level without having the opportunities that they may have had heretofore, that we garner that expertise across government as a whole, but within the Defence Forces as well. Yeah, and I think as part of the Naval Service Regeneration Plan, we're looking to develop a new training technician scheme, direct entry training technician scheme for people in the Naval Service. So the Defence Forces are looking out to see what opportunities are there for exactly the cohort of people you've been talking about. It's like in the cyber and all of those things, we need to build up capability there. I'll go back to...