Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the entire team and thank them for their opening testimony, which was excellent. There have been a few improvements in the Defence Forces in recent years from an individual welfare point of view, with better pay, accommodation, gymnasiums, rations and medical care, and that is chiefly as a result of the testimony provided to this committee over recent years. To echo what Mr. Guinan said, we should not force people into using anonymous accounts on X or Facebook. We should do our business in an open and transparent fashion, and this committee is an ideal forum for that. In case the organisations’ members think their appearance here over the past four years has not had an effect, I would say the opposite is true. It has been a major catalyst for not just change but progress, so long may it continue.

I have just come from the plenary session of the Dáil, so some of the following questions may have been covered. If they have been, our guests might just gloss over them. It appears no meaningful consultation was carried out before this issue came before the committee. I am just a humble farm boy. I am not precious and do not have notions, as none of us does, but I would have expected that if draft legislation were coming before this committee, it should be almost at its final stages and we should just tweak it. We should not get the very first draft and expect to collect someone's homework, basically, but that is what we are getting here. There should have been at least face-to-face consultation and I am concerned that has not happened. The partnership approach, which has been mentioned by some of my colleagues, is the way to go. It is the direction of travel throughout society and the military should be no different.

On the gagging clause, I agree it is definitely an issue. I compliment the deputy spokesperson of the representative association in recent years. When he goes on radio or TV, he is absolutely sensible - that is the word that was used - rational, reasonable, respectful and courteous. I think we should encourage him to speak more often in public, if anything, and not try to double down on this culture of silence. It is worth remembering that the culture of silence is what got the Defence Forces into the fix they are in, and doubling down on that is not going to make it better but worse. Eighteen months ago, I attended an incredible event at a hotel in Dublin city centre. It was a Slándáil defence and security conference, with about 100 people in the room. I am not sure whether our guests were present. About half of the audience were military uniform personnel, while the other half were civilians, wearing suits or casual wear, and the military people were ordered to sit there mute for the entire day. They could listen but they could not speak. In fairness to Professor Brigid Laffan, she stood up and said it was highly unusual and that it would not happen in any other country but North Korea. We are treating our military people like primary schoolchildren. They have to sit there and we want them to be seen but not heard. That is highly unusual. We should encourage people to speak up and address this culture of silence.

On the stripping of the rights of the director of military prosecutions and the military judge, I am not sure what the Chair's thoughts are. It would be probably inappropriate, and we do not have the time in any event, to bring them before the committee but perhaps he could write to them asking them their views on this. Was it something they had sought and were they consulted? How would they recommend we go forward? Perhaps a letter to those two individuals is something we could consider.

On the oversight body, again, I am not personalising anything and it has been mentioned, but the independent monitoring group was a very effective forum. It was unilaterally discontinued only recently but I think we should go back to that forum. Everyone is in favour of proper, balanced oversight, but the constituent membership of this new oversight board is not balanced in any shape or form.

We have an excellent committee secretariat. It is top-notch. Not only is its first loyalty to the committee but its only loyalty is to the committee. I am 100% sure of that. In the case of the secretariat of the independent review group, IRG, however, two of the five members were drawn directly from the Department of Defence. That means 40% of the secretariat that drafted the report were from the Department of Defence. I am not sure if any of the team is aware whether there were any Chinese walls between these two civil servants and the Secretary General's office. It seems unusual that we would try to put in place a structure that is independent, as Senator McDowell said, and then populate it with people from the Department of Defence. Are we surprised at the exclusive instructions whereby only the Secretary General is an ex officiomember? I am not saying there was interference, but I am concerned that pressure could have been brought very easily and I think they have walked themselves into that position by allowing the perception to exist, whether it is the reality or not. I have to question the independence of that IRG if it were so constituted.

In respect of the deadline, to be honest, I am quite happy with the status quo. As someone said, if it is not broken, do not fix it. I do not see any rush with this. We have been waiting decades for this type of legislation, so let us just get right, not least when someone is trying to jump us into something we might not be comfortable with. There is a reason it is being delayed, namely, the preliminary steps of consultation have not taken place. I do not see why we should rush into this. We should do it properly. If somebody does want to get this over the line quickly, the easiest way to do that is to accept the amendments that have been put forward by the representative associations, which are consistently reasonable, sensible, implementable and absolutely something we should go for.

Those are the only points I have to make. I welcome the principle of the legislation, but it should not come before us in such a half-baked fashion. All these issues should have been teased out in open forum, face to face with the reasonable representative associations, ICTU and EUROMIL. I hope in the case of the next batch of legislation that is scheduled to take place later this year, namely, the higher level core function of the Defence Forces and structures, moving the Air Corps to the air force and the Naval Service to the navy, more meaningful consultation will take place prior to it coming before the committee. Again, we should not be looking into the weeds here. We should be looking at the higher level stuff and all these preliminary steps should have been done long before this.