Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was really short in my questions, and I have a lot of them. I would appreciate if the Chief of Staff could stick to the particular questions and give as much detail as possible.

I note that Dr. Mellett is saying he would like more initiatives. I suppose the difference between him saying that and me saying that is that I am not the Chief of Staff. I am not in a position to implement initiatives I would like. I hear what he is saying when he says he could not implement a thing like a crèche, which would give me alarm bells.

He mentioned the issue of harassment and I will deal with that. We can talk in generalisations but it is good when we deal with a specific example because it portrays the reality on the ground, rather than how we might like to get there. As the Chief of Staff said he takes harassment very seriously, I will deal with an incident and we will see is it acceptable or not. This was obviously a very concerning incident on one of the naval ships last year where a woman was falsely imprisoned by two male NCOs who broke into her cabin, wearing just towels around their waists, and harassed her to the point that she left the Naval Service absolutely terrified.

In response, the two men received reprimands which will basically disappear from their records after about two years. None of the supervisors received any punishment for not ensuring discipline was maintained on their ship and the commanding officer was quickly promoted to commander after that. Add that to the fact of the spyhole being discovered earlier this year in the female shower area in the naval headquarters and, as far as we know, nobody was sanctioned for that.

Can the Chief of Staff comment on what specifically is being done about sexual harassment? Is it a safe place for women? How can women have confidence in the Defence Forces' policy when that reality that I described happened? It did not seem to me that was dealt with properly, or does he think it was?