Mr. Justice Alan Mahon:

There are very few cases relating to retired members. What happens on occasion is that a complaint starts when somebody is serving and that person is then discharged, perhaps for a reason unconnected with the complaint. When I am starting such a case, the member is serving and when I am concluding it, the member has been discharged.

I do not have the breakdown of figures between male and female complainants. Obviously the cases involving females would be much smaller in number because they are a small percentage of the overall numbers in the Defence Forces. One of the things I noticed was a significant increase in the numbers of officer complaints from 2019 compared with previous years and that continued into 2021. I do not know why that is the case. Going back a number of years, officer complaints were small in number whereas they are now a bigger percentage of the overall.