Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes, we could talk about that for months, never mind hours and days. I will certainly look into this aspect because I am very surprised by it.

I am not sure if Mr. Justice Mahon's office deals with the context of my last query. I do not mince my words. I had incidents during my time in my former position as my party's spokesperson on mental health where people died by suicide in the Defence Forces. When I contacted the chief of staff of whatever department was being dealt with to ask about what happened, I do not think I ever got a straight reply. I will outline the normal reply received. I will use the navy as an example for a change. The response would have been that it did not investigate suicides and that was the coroner's job. The body of the person would have been removed from the barracks or base or whatever and gone to the office of the county or city coroner. Suicide would then have been determined, but not registered on the site or campus where it happened because the body was off-site when suicide was determined as the cause of death in the coroner's office. Suicide, therefore, did not happen on an Army or Naval Service base.

I have dealt with a few cases like that. Mr. Justice Mahon mentioned penalisation and I will come to that. I will try to shorten my contribution to this aspect. I was not happy with the responses in those cases I mentioned. I wrote back to the office concerned and the only answer I was given then concerned a negligent discharge as the cause of death. It can be imagined how the husband, wife or partner of the deceased person felt when I then had to go back and say I had been told it did not happen, there was no mention of suicide and I could not get any answers. Does the ombudsman have the power to investigate such cases?

I ask because there are serious incidents. This is why I built my contribution by beginning to talk at the start about getting the scope of Mr. Justice Mahon's office enlarged, not understanding that the full scope of the protected disclosures legislation does not assist his office in the way it was supposed to assist everybody. This is my point. Can the siblings or partner of a member of the Defence Forces who died not by actions of war but by actions of their own in taking their own life approach the ombudsman in this regard? Can they say there have been reports and while it has been acknowledged that something happened in respect of negligent discharge, unfortunately the cause of death was not recorded within the precincts of where the individual concerned worked? Can Mr. Justice Mahon's office go back and investigate a situation like that? I know it sounds complicated now-----