Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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That is excellent. Prior to the appointment of Mr. Justice Mahon, one of the first cases I encountered as a Senator was a complaint that had been brought to the ombudsman by an officer of the Defence Forces. The who or the where is irrelevant at this point. An extremely thorough investigation was carried out. Having gone through the entire Defence Forces appeals system and failed, the case was upheld by the ombudsman. It was quite a serious case.

The Defence Forces decided to batten down and lock down, that this would go away in time. The Department and the Minister decided to ignore the really exceptionally detailed report of the ombudsman. I personally brought the case twice to the Minister by way of Commencement matters in the Seanad and failed to get any action on it. Eventually I put a legal team together for the man. He took the matter to the courts and I believe that he came out with a satisfactory settlement. This calls into question the level of co-operation the ombudsman's office gets with the Department and with the Defence Forces. From my time in the service, I remember that we tended to be rather insular in our approach to things and, for example, we did not like people from other units coming in to examine something in our unit. It is not that it ever happened that much but when I was serving we worked together and we would be slow to accept an outsider coming in to look at something. On the issue of co-operation, I wonder about the level of co-operation, with the Department, the Defence Forces' general staff, as well as the battalion and company commanders and so on. Do the witnesses find that there is an insular approach? Are they open to the ombudsman's suggestions and are they implementing them?