Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Sometimes in this country bureaucracy goes mad. I am proud – we should all be proud – to have in our Visitors Gallery today, retired Lieutenant Colonel Earnán Naughton, retired Sergeant Major Seamus Gannon, and retired Sergeant Larry Carthy. These three men sent an email to all of us regarding the death of Billy Kedian, who gave his life to save the lives of 14 people in Lebanon. I have called time and time again for a medal for gallantry to be awarded to this man. These men wrote the citation for that medal. Why has it not been delivered to date? One of the reasons is that Defence Force regulations, DFR, prevent the award of a medal if the claim has not been made within two years for a military medal for gallantry, MMG, and four years for a distinguished service medal, DSM. Have we ever heard anything so ridiculous? We are concentrating on a ridiculous line in DFR A9, which effectively says: "You have got to get it in in time; otherwise you can't get it." All it takes is the stroke of a pen from the Minister to do away with that. One might ask why the Minister would do that. He has done it already because DFRs were amended as a result of the Jadotville inquiry to provide for the award of a medal to Commandant Pat Quinlan by those who did not see the action and it eliminated the time. Why do we not eliminate it for everybody? These men travelled from Galway today to meet people here to explain the case. I think we should get behind the "Kedian Act" and ask the Minister to amend DFR A9. Let us trawl through the valour that existed in our Defence Forces - the good stories – and honour those men.

In the time I have left, I will very quickly refer to another matter. I was rather disturbed yesterday to see that the search and rescue tender is now going to come before the courts. Everybody in this room is well aware of the fact that for years I have been talking about oversight of the process. I have a letter from the Ministers with joint responsibility telling me that they were not involved in the process: that they trusted the Civil Service.It now looks like we are going to engage in serious litigation as a result of the way the tender was handled.

To go back to something I have said time and time again, what is the point of having Oireachtas joint committees if Secretaries General can refuse to attend? We must compel those who hold the highest office in the Civil Service in each Department to appear if they are called to a committee. There should be no out and no way they can say they are not attending. They are perfectly within their rights at a committee to say that they cannot answer a particular question for whatever reason but if they are called, they should attend. I ask the Deputy Leader to bring those remarks back to the relevant Ministers.