Mr. Derek Priestley:

The concern in regard to suspensions is that we seem to be just giving a kind of a polar option – to suspend or not to suspend. We need to break that down a little bit. That would not normally be the case in a civilian employment. A civilian commercial entity would be very slow to suspend somebody and then not get any productive work out of them. From an organisational point of view, there are other options. I am not saying a person should not be suspended, but there are other options. There should be a high bar to suspend someone. You can relocate somebody within a barracks or perhaps to a different location if that is appropriate. We would not have thought about it pre-pandemic, but working from home is a regular enough feature now which is being facilitated for members of the Defence Forces. That is also an option. If someone is suspended, he or she remains productive if they are doing that. It could also be said that it is not appropriate for a person to do the full range of duties. I am talking about the more sensitive security-based ones. You could place somebody on restricted duties. There are other options that are not referred to.

Ultimately, our fear is that if in the environment in which we work and under the chain of command, commanders believe a person must be either suspended or not suspended, we will end up with an overabundance of suspensions. The fear, as we have stated in respect of other public sector areas, is that this tends to run on a bit. We are trying to suggest alternatives, the first being that the bar would be high, giving commanders options. That would be appropriate within regulations set out; however, again, our fear is that there will be no consultation on that, just a rush to suspend and to leave it at that.

On checks and balances, we feel there should be some form of appeal. It might not be obvious to a person outside the Defence Forces but the chain of command can be quite linear in the way it thinks. If one commander makes a recommendation and it goes to a more senior commander for appeal, there is not really a re-evaluation of the facts. The same things are considered. In our considerations, we said it may be appropriate to have some form of external appeal of a suspension on that basis. That appeal would have timelines to drive it on and get the right balance, rather than just having the polar choice between suspending and not suspending.