Mr. Jim Griffin:

To expand on what Mr. O'Mahony was trying to explain to Deputy Carey there, when we were given the code of conduct book, it was there to help us along the way with these "grievances", as the Deputy called them. Some of them would be minor disputes that would happen on any given training exercise if somebody turned up late or if a volunteer's shoes were on when walking in the station door instead of his or her boots, because the volunteer was rushing from work. The officer might say, "Go out and put on your boots". The majority of these grievances were minor, but because the code, in its current form, is more or less rammed down our throats word for word, it has spiralled small disputes that were rectified in our units over the past 25 or 30 years into what are classed now as grievances where an outside agency has to come in and deliberate or a manager is forced down to the station. If they gave us the autonomy, the officers and the deputies, a close-knit female and male unit, these disputes would not arise in the first place. That is the honest truth.