Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Women of Honour and the good members of the Army would forgive me for not wasting time on praise because I have only five minutes on a report with 100 pages, along with 12 appendices running to 294 pages. I have read the 100 pages but have not read all the appendices yet.

This comes on top of the suffering and pain of numerous women and men who were ignored when they made complaints over a long period of time. Over 18 months ago, the Women of Honour appeared on the documentary made by Katie Hannon. Wherever we were as women, we stood silent in utter disbelief and shock and we shared the pain as best we could at what we were hearing. It has taken quite some time to get the report, which the Tánaiste has had for some weeks. I welcome that he has published it.

What does it tell us? It tells us too much for me to go through in five minutes. Over 15 headings it makes 13 recommendations. The Tánaiste has agreed to progress some of those immediately, including the independent judicial process. The establishment of a restorative justice process has not been mentioned. I am not 100% sure about that and I would like the Tánaiste to respond on it. As Deputy Clarke mentioned, page 7 gives a taste of what is coming in defining "tubbing", "mobbing" and "beasting". Tubbing is defined as "the placing of an individual in a barrel, which may contain any combination of chemicals, oil, airplane fuel, deceased animal carcasses, or other substances, for the purposes of hazing or punishment". That is just explaining some of the things that were done.

I have heard the term, "watershed moment" mentioned. What does that mean? Are we having a watershed moment now because of this report? Why did we not have a watershed moment before this? Let us look back. In 2000 there was research by Tom Clonan, now a Senator. He is a very brave man who came forward and, foolishly by his own admission, thought things had improved. He came back publicly to say he was misled. We had the report by Dr. Eileen Doyle in 2002, the report by the expert advisory group. There was no watershed moment there. It was followed by three reports in 2004, 2008 and 2014 by the independent monitoring group on foot of the 2002 expert group. What happened to those? These are questions for the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach and the various Ministers. What happened? The independent monitoring group was disbanded. Three monkeys come to mind: hear no evil; see no evil; speak no evil. I take that back but it comes to mind. Why did we disband the independent monitoring group? We then had the documentary in September 2021.

The report is welcome and very clearly articulates the sexist, toxic and dangerous culture within the Defence Forces. In case there is any doubt, that continues today. The former judge, Ms Justice O'Hanlon, has spoken about the enduring nature of issues around unacceptable behaviour - not historical but ongoing.

We have had an utter failure to learn and then to top it all I have press release here stating the Chief of Staff has stated he had been unaware of abuse and bullying in the Defence Forces. It beggars belief. It is simply not credible and if he did not know about it, that is not credible either. Nothing is credible about the report from this man, given the history that we hear. I am simply taking 23 years of history based on the courage of those who came forward.

I welcome that the Government is accepting the recommendations and the Tánaiste might confirm that means all of them.

In the short time I have left I will cover some of the quotes that stand out. One states, "To be ‘female’ is to be considered an object rather than a full human being." We should remember that the Commission on the Defence Forces failed to mention any of this. It made a short reference to it but did not take it into account when looking at retention problems or any of the problems the Defence Forces are facing. Another states, "The perception of interviewees was that the Defence Forces is more concerned about what effect a sanction might have on the career of the alleged perpetrator" and a further one states, "Women are viewed as occupying a low status in the Defence Forces." It stated that there was no safe environment for men or women. Another one states:

Apart from the horrendous nature of the alleged rapes and sexual assaults suffered and described in great detail [in this report], what happened afterwards is of equal concern. Instead of delivering a proper, modern, streamlined and skilled response to the complainant, the individual was often told to bury the complaint, or they were asked whether they seriously wanted to complain formally.

This has continued to today. In further quotations, "Flexibility and alternative thinking is suspect." and "the Defence Forces’ values are undermined by the perception that the senior ranks believe the law does not apply to them". Where did we hear that before? The Garda Síochána comes to mind. The law does not apply to them. I emphasise that I am not talking about gardaí on the ground. Moreover, "Pregnancy is described as being career ending". Can we imagine that? Complaints were described as "career ending" and "The Defence Forces’ focus seems to have been on maintaining a certain image and controlling the narrative."

I finish by mentioning the impacts of the unacceptable behaviour. My time is up and I cannot go into it. There was everything from suicide to complete breakdown as a result not just of the abuse but the manner in which it was dealt with. I ask the Tánaiste to outline a timeline for implementation of the recommendations. I ask to give a commitment that the Women of Honour will be an integral part of preparing the terms of reference for the statutory inquiry, which should have taken place a year ago, but we are going with it now. We need absolute clarity so that those of us in the Dáil are not constantly tabling questions, which is our job, constantly as we did regarding this report as to when is it going to be published, where is it in the Cabinet and so on.

Let us have clear lines of communication. Thank you for your forbearance, a Cheann Comhairle.

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