Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will make one point. It occurs to me that there is a slightly sinister aspect to this - that the Government wants military judges and the military director of public prosecutions not to be members of RACO or whatever and, at the same time, it is proposed to amend the Defence Acts to make it an offence to make critical remarks about Government policy. Perhaps the Government thinks that if a charge was brought against a person for making a political statement, members of RACO would be in a slightly embarrassed position if such a charge came before them. The Government seems to be clearing the decks for prosecutions of soldiers and officers of representative associations breaching the terms of this new section 2A. Listening to the debate today, it suddenly struck me that perhaps that is what it is driving at. It wants to have the deck cleared so that people from RACO or PDFORRA or whatever can be punished through military law for breach of these provisions, which seem to fly in the face of ordinary human rights as they are understood right across Europe.