Mr. Conor King:

As the issue of the director of military prosecutions is so currently personal to our association, I might take the lead on that and I might give over the issue of the oversight body.

Our understanding is also that the Director of Public Prosecutions staff are allowed to be members of public sector trade unions, as they should. We also note that we now have the unilateral removal of the military judge who is also a member represented by RACO through this proposed legislation. The Association of Judges of Ireland advocates for pay and conditions of service. For proof, you can look at the paycommission.gov.ieand you will see letters from the Association of Judges of Ireland to the chair of the Public Service Pay Commission talking about judges' pay. It is publicly available information.

It is very interesting that the Senator raised the point of the quasi-judicial or minor judicial function of commanding officers and ordinary members of the Defence Forces who may be detailed to appear in a court martial, which is extremely serious. A member of RACO could, hypothetically, be sitting in the dock. Do they relinquish their membership for the purpose of that court martial?

The adjudication in relation to the director of military prosecutions was something we have fought for, as I said, over years now. The Senator rightly says the adjudication outcome was that the director of military prosecutions should be a member of the association, but we have to look back at where the director of military prosecutions came from.

It came from the Defence (Amendment) Act 2007. Between 2007 and 2019, the director of military prosecutions functioned as a member of RACO and conducted many court martials. Are we now to call into question all of those court martials? I would say not but it is a question that should be answered by the Department.

The terms and conditions were not circulated to the association. We found them on publicjobs.ieby chance. The Department retrospectively wrote a Defence Force regulation to then give rise to the prohibition of membership and did not share it with the association in flagrant contravention of our rights under Defence Force Regulation S6, which concerns any amendments to legislation that affect the scope of representation, with this being another example. We went through an adjudication process and an arbitration board process where the arbitration board determined that it was arbitrable or could be adjudicated upon with all the facts that are before the board. The adjudicator made his finding, which was laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. One piece that is missing that I have to talk about is the fact that the Department appealed that adjudication but that appeal has not yet been heard. Rather than affording the arbitration board, which again was appointed by the Government, the procedural courtesy to hear the appeal within our conciliation and arbitration scheme, the Department has moved to change primary legislation and it is a case of "who cares about the consequences?", so there is no accountability from our perspective and it is abuse of a dominant position.

I reiterate that this strikes at the heart of representation not just in the Defence Forces but in the wider public sector. It is unreasonable, disproportionate, unnecessary and discriminatory to remove the rights and protections of a member of the public service or a member of the Defence Forces - it does not matter which - to be a member of a representative association. There are many benefits to membership that everybody knows globally but are also specific to our association that we have fought to secure for our members. They include preferential offers on travel insurance or health insurance - things that are now unavailable to the director of military prosecutions. The question that needs to be asked is whether the director of military prosecutions believes that he should not be a member of the association. Was he asked? Does the military judge believe he should not be a member of a representative association? Was he asked because we know we were not asked? How does membership of an association infringe upon the independence of an officeholder in the performance of his or her functions because nobody has explained that to us?