Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

Certainly bullying appeared to be endemic in the military when the Doyle report was commissioned in 2002, which is more than two years ago. There is evidence that the situation has improved substantially since then. As I said earlier, there is still much to be done but I believe the Defence Forces ombudsman, the new training schemes, new integrated personnel management system and the designated contract persons will have a vital role to play in this regard. I agree with Deputy Sherlock that the original statistics indicated females were more likely than males to be bullied.

On the first part of the Deputy's question, 80 of these 200 people are already trained and ready to start work. We hope to have 170 in place by Christmas and obviously it will not take too long to put the remaining 30 in place. These people are ready to go into action straight away.

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