Soldiers are applying for a day's leave per week as they cannot afford to buy fuel to drive to work.
Members of the Defence Forces are now facing a long commute to work because of the massive re-organisation of military structures due to the closures of barracks.
A conference heard yesterday that morale was at its lowest for some time.
Mark Scally, president of Pdforra, the association representing soldiers, sailors and air crew, told its annual conference in Cork that the majority of serving members now treated the Defence Forces as a job rather than a vocation.
Mr Scally claimed that young members, aged between 18 and 21 years, were totally disillusioned. The majority of these members of the Defence Forces joined and completed their training far from where they were raised and their commute depended on what they had to do operationally.
The cost of living drained the low wages they received, with the result that a lot of them were leaving, he added
Irish Independent
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