Minister suggests Athlone Army HQ decision isn’t near

In the Dáil last week, Defence Minister Helen McEntee was urged to consider Athlone as the location for the proposed national headquarters of the Irish Army, and was questioned about when a final decision on this long-running saga would be made.

Custume Barracks in Athlone is regarded as one of the main sites in contention to become the headquarters of the Irish Army, and, earlier this year, a Department of Defence timeline cited December 2027 as the target date by which the headquarters would be in place.

However, in a Dáil debate on Tuesday last, June 9, Minister McEntee studiously avoided giving any indication of her views on Athlone becoming the Army HQ, and also suggested a decision on the headquarters location would not be coming in the near future.

The Minister was being questioned by Roscommon-Galway TD Martin Daly, who asked her "when a decision on a location for the Army headquarters will be made" and whether "Custume Barracks, Athlone, will be considered".

The local Fianna Fáil TD told the Minister that "the military history" of Athlone and Custume Barracks "goes back to 1691".

The town is "geographically strategically located, and is well served by rail, road and river," Deputy Daly said. He added that Athlone "also has access to third level education, namely, the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS)... So I hope it will be given full consideration when a decision is made."

The Minister's reply, though lengthy, didn't give any timeline for a decision on the location of a national Army headquarters.

She stated that "force design" - or force restructuring - teams had been established within the Army, Naval Service and Air Corps.

Minister McEntee said that, on completion these teams' "force design work" the Chief of Staff would submit a report to her for consideration - and no decision on the Army headquarters would be made until after that stage.

"The (force design) process has to be gone through before any decision can be taken on the Army headquarters," she told the Dáil.

"This is complicated and challenging work that we need to get right. We need to make sure that if we are looking at modernisation and restructuring of our Defence Forces, we take the time to do this correctly, and that is the work that is happening at the moment.

"What is important for me is that any force design process will include a transitional plan with incremental steps beyond current numbers to the 11,500 force recommended by the Commission on the Defence Forces.

"As the Deputy will appreciate, because this is a significant body of work, there is a huge amount of effort by all involved. It is once all of these measures have been put in place that we will be able to identify where the (headquarters) location might be."

The potential arrival of national Army headquarters status in Athlone has been mooted for more than four years, following the February 2022 report of the Commission on the Defence Forces which called for such a headquarters to be situated in a "central location" in the country.

The Commission recommended that the Army, Air Corps and Naval service should each have their own service headquarters, and that a post of Army Sergeant Major should be created and based in the Army headquarters.

This recommendation was subsequently "accepted in principle" by the Government, but none of the successive Ministers for Defence since 2022 have thus far backed Athlone for the designation.