Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In December, following the airing of the RTÉ documentary "Women of Honour", the Minister for Defence told the House that in light of the dreadful revelations that emerged he was going to put in place a process that would deliver real change. Unfortunately, what has come from his Department has fallen far short of this commitment or the great lengths to which the women concerned went in their pursuit of truth and justice.

When survivors of abuse, in whatever form or circumstances, go to great lengths and at great personal cost to tell their stories and to seek justice, it is incumbent on all of us to ensure every mechanism of the State is made available to address these issues and to ensure they do not happen again. Just as we have seen with the survivors of the mother and baby homes, the Government seems to listen to anybody else apart from those immediately affected. Just like those survivors, the women of honour and others who have had similar experiences continue to live with the consequences of the injustices imposed on them.

What we have learned through these revelations is deeply disturbing as it concerns some of the gravest allegations that can be made. An internal review will not deliver real change because we need to know the extent to which these problems prevail within the Defence Forces. There is a legal and moral obligation to ensure those who serve the State, offer protection to others at home and preserve peace abroad are themselves protected.

The Offices of the Ombudsman for the Defence Forces is not an effective mechanism for dealing with complaints of the nature raised, given the seriousness of the allegations concerned, even if it accepts there are shortcomings in the ability of the office to deal with the issues arising from the Defence Forces. One of the most serious of these is the fact that section 4 of the 2004 Act does not adequately provide for certain categories of interpersonal complaints, including inappropriate behaviour, sexual abuse and sexual harassment, among others. This particular shortcoming means we do not have accurate data on allegations of this nature, nor does the ombudsman have the ability to conduct its own initial inquiries. We have left it up to the internal investigation systems for too long.

The women of honour need a statutory inquiry that has the power and scope to determine the scale and depth of the problems across the Defence Forces. We have to examine the culture within the Defence Forces, not ignore it in favour of something lighter which will leave the women of honour feeling more abandoned than they already do. That is how they have told us they feel.

The Defence Forces is a workplace and, as such, the Minister has to commit to a zero-tolerance approach towards bullying, harassment, discrimination, assault and all forms of gender-based violence in the workplace by establishing a full statutory inquiry into the allegations and their repercussions. The women of honour most recently walked out of a meeting with the Minister because he would not address their concerns. If he continues to ignore their demands, what he effectively will be doing is ignoring every other victim or potential victim.

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