Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A major body of work has been done by this commission, which is necessary. I will add my voice to the commendations of the commission for that work. I will also add my voice to what some of my colleagues have spoken about, which are the legacy issues that still remain and have had a significant impact on certain people's lives. We talked about chemicals and poisoning in respect of the Air Corps and the outstanding issue relating to Lariam. This probably continues the long history of this State not putting its hand up, accepting that wrong was done and trying to treat people in a reasonable way, but instead just shutting the doors and trying to defend itself. That does not serve any purpose for any of us. It is something that needs to change.

We were all in the Chamber last week dealing with the issue of the Women of Honour. These are people who bravely came forward to highlight utterly unacceptable and criminal behaviour that should not be part of any entity in any state. The message went out clearly that this sort of behaviour is utterly unacceptable and needs to be dealt with. I accept that the Minister and others agree with that, but the fact is, as has been done previously, in an attempt to deal with the issue we did not take those people with us who brought the issue up and who had suffered the abuse. That is a serious failing. Even at this stage, there is a requirement to re-engage with all the stakeholders and those women to come up with an investigative mechanism or inquiry that is acceptable to them. That is absolutely necessary. As I stated, it is just one of those things we have failed to do in this State.

The commission has put a number of questions regarding the future of the Defence Forces. It will probably beg wider questions across this House, but we all accept that we need a fit-for-purpose Defence Forces. We all know about the issue of retention. I will speak about members of the Defence Forces that I talk to in Dundalk. I remember one man telling me that he could not advise any young woman or man to join the Army at this point. He said it just would not make sense as such young people would not be coming in under the same conditions he did. That is a dreadful thing to be said. We are all aware that there is a particular issue in respect of those who are just in the door and have only two or three years' service. We know the ratios need to be looked at in that a serious amount of institutional knowledge has been lost and we do not necessarily have people who could operate in a mentoring or advisory capacity in the necessary hierarchy of the military set-up. These are the matters we need to address straight out.

Deputy Brady spoke far more eloquently than me about the fact we need to deal with ICTU affiliations for RACO and PDFORRA and the legal questions that still remain. I ask the Minister to use the powers he has to deal with this issue. At the end of the day, the fact is, as in any job, respect is derived from working conditions and pay conditions.

They are the issues he also brought up in regard to the working time directive and a military that is under severe pressure. In those cases, people will be overworked, hours will be overlooked and people will have to double-up. Within that, due diligence that should be done will not be done. We have had the issues with regard to training exercises being cancelled. It is frightening if any of this impacts with regard to live-firing, training or whatever else.

I recall that many years ago when I was in DCU - I was not the greatest student at that time - there were many Defence Forces personnel there studying computing in particular. At that point in time, it was a different set-up. We now have multiple failings. Much has been said in regard to neutrality being an absolute requirement for this State. There is a wider question in regard to the military spend, but we need to have the capacity to be a neutral State at this point in time.

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