In 2015, the Irish Minister For Defence issued a mandate: that the Irish Defence forces would double the number of females in the Defence Forces from 6% to 12% in the coming years.

With this objective in mind, the brief for 2016 was to drive female recruitment to begin to make inroads into the overall objective. But the challenges were great:

1 The production budget was only €20k, and the media budget, a maximum of €1k for Facebook only

2 We had just five weeks to try to increase numbers on the previous year, as the closing date for applications is 22 May 2016, 2016.

3 In 2015, only 350 females applied… so demand is not high.

4 And of those, 282 didn’t show up for the first day’s training.

In short, the Defence Forces had recruited a small number of women in 2015, and

11,700 young Irish women are destined for a job in a supermarket, their social circumstances having ruled out college and career as viable options.

11,799 team players whose brilliance on the field, pitch, and court isnt valued in the real world.

Who feel they are only at their very best for the eight hours per week when they are training and playing.

Yet whose values as an athlete and team-mate are a perfect match with the Defence Forces: physical and moral courage, selflesness, loyalty, respect.

The opportunity lay in them not knowing that there is a career that would value them for what makes them great as a team player; that they can get paid for what they are good at.

Our idea was to make those who fit realise that there is a job out there that they have been training for all their lives... they just didn’t know it.