Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The members of the Women of Honour group say they are not resigned to there being a judge-led review into the allegations of sexual abuse and bullying in the Defence Forces. Our laws need to change to protect our people in the Defence Forces against inappropriate behaviour. This is surely every person’s right. Every member of the Defence Forces has the right to be treated with respect, equality and dignity and to carry out his or her duties in a safe workplace, which is underpinned by a culture of zero tolerance for any kind of bullying, discrimination or harassment.

These women in the Women of Honour group are part of our front-line services. We talked about the front-line workers in the health services before, including our nurses and student nurses. Again, when it came to the student nurses, I regard it as discrimination that the Government did not pay them. We now have the members of the Women of Honour group, front-line service members in our Defence Forces, and the Government will not bring them in and ask them their side of the story to get the truth. The best way to get the truth is to ask the people themselves. These members of the Women of Honour are a part of our Defence Forces. They have grave concerns regarding irregularities.

They need to be listened to in order to get the right sense of what happened and to bring to account the people who had anything to do with it. There cannot be anybody saved from these women's testimonies. Nobody can be saved. Everybody has to be held to account who had anything to do with this.

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