Mr. George Kerwin:

Mr. Garland referred to people's experiences overseas. A huge part of our history has been lost in terms of the experience of soldiers on the ground. We have put together a group within IUNVA to go around the country and sit down with veterans of the Congo and the Middle East to ask them what happened to them and to record their experiences. Last year I was in the presence of some cadets in the military college and was talking about the Suez Canal, air fights overhead and artillery coming in, and they were looking at me as though I had come from another planet. I am one of many veterans whose experiences are not recorded anywhere. We all learned from the people who went out to the Congo without being briefed or prepared, with the consequences we saw, and now we are one of the best prepared and equipped units anywhere in the world. Irish military personnel are on duty in 16 locations around the world.

We would love to see a monument, preferably in Dublin, to what this country has contributed to making this world a better and safer place to live in. This is not just about the Army but about gardaí as well, and civilians who have gone abroad and made a major contribution to making this world a better and safer place to live in. It should be recognised and this is something we are pursuing, so I would like members to support it.

The Irish soldier is very special overseas. I was visiting a unit as press officer 20 years ago and there was a soldier on duty who had arrived only a month earlier. There was a footpath going into the village where he was on duty and, while I was chatting to him and asking him what he was doing and how he was getting on with the local people, he told me to watch a schoolboy, aged six or seven, coming down the path with his schoolbag on his way to school. As he approached the sentry the soldier came to attention, saluted the little boy and said "Dia dhuit, Mohammed." The little boy saluted him back and said "Dia's Muire dhuit, soldier." One cannot train that. It was this young man's nature, and that was his contribution to peace in the world.