Conor King, RACO general secretary, was discussing recruitment and retention challenges at an Industrial Relations News conference in Croke Park.

He also claimed that the salary for cadets pays way below the minimum wage for “the guts of two years”.

Mr King noted that the compulsory retirement age for defence forces personnel had increased to 62 during a discussion chaired by presenter Claire Brock. He said it had ranged from 54 to 60, depending on rank.

“While I would welcome it in some respects and it has given security of tenure, it also means that we’re moving away from the reasons why there was an earlier retirement age in the frontline uniformed services – the defence forces, garda síochána, fire service, prison service.”

He said these careers are robust and there is night work, work at sea, and defence force members are expected to need to retire early.

“So putting a kind of a sticking plaster of 62 years of age, you run the risk from our perspective of being renamed Dad’s Army, which was a euphemism that was used back in the 1980s, probably unfair to a degree but we don’t want to get back to that position.”

He said there is a need to maintain a young, fit, force and those who retire must be enabled to do so with a viable pension.

Mr King said the public service pension scheme introduced in 2013 does not really work for the uniformed services. Their mandatory retirement age of 62 means there is a four year gap until the state pension age of 66, he said.

“It’s now 62 for all,” he told the Irish Independent. “We didn’t ask for that; but chances of it being changed are slim. What we need is a pension system that recognises that certain members will have to retire early, and an occupational supplementary pension is required to cater for this. Some will stay to 62 but they will still need an occupational supplementary pension to bridge the gap between 62 and the state pension age of 66.”

He said the defence forces is probably the only organisation in the state that doesn’t adequately record working time for its men and women.

However, he said organisation of working time legislation has the potential to be “seismic” for recruitment and retention if delivered properly.

Mr King said they are “three quarters” of the way there, and work on the payment of overtime is advanced.

He said the defence forces is “at its lowest ebb” in terms of strength and capability and a record level of investment described by minister of state Thomas Byrne in a video, has come from a “frighteningly” low base.

Gerard Guinan, PdForra general secretary, said the defence forces are historically competing with gardaí and firefighters to attract recruits. He said there is a public perception that pay and conditions are poor as they had to “launder our dirty washing in public” during a fight for better terms.

Donnacha Ó Beacháin, professor of politics at Dublin City University, told the conference that not defending ourselves invites attack.

He said small Baltic states are preparing people with guides on survival in times of crisis, including military invasions. He said he had a battery-operated radio as the internet may not work.

“The mentality of these small states who have a lot of experience, and a history that I wouldn’t envy…. is that to be unprotected is to invite attack,” he said. “So you don’t actually say ‘We are vulnerable so no-one’s going to attack us. We’re nice people.’ Actually it makes you a potential target because you’re the weakest link. And as a Polish general said at this meeting that I had in Vilnius, he said if there is to be a widespread conflagration not confined to Ukraine and Europe, it probably won’t start with the rolling of tanks.

“It will start with the cutting of cables and that’s where we’re particularly vulnerable because of course so many of the north Atlantic cables go through our territorial waters.”

Meanwhile, Éamonn Donnelly, Forsa deputy general secretary, described legislation on the right to request remote working as a “lame duck”. He said it was toothless and described the “cumbersome” process an individual must go through when making a case as similar to “drip by drip water torture”.

He said the law was a “post Covid act of appeasement” by the government.

Mr Donnelly said employers who are concerned about mentoring for younger staff due to remote working arrangements could discuss “dedicated mentorship days”.

Nichola Harkin, head of employment law services at Ibec, said the legislation will stay the same following a recent government review.

This means that the Workplace Relations Commission cannot investigate the merits of an employer’s decision on a remote working request.

“I think that is absolutely and entirely appropriate when you think of the different factors that need to be balanced,” she said.