Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have raised this issue once or twice over the past few weeks but I would like to raise it with the Taoiseach because I am not satisfied with the responses I have got. I was contacted by a Sergeant Patrick Gorman, who served for 35 years in the navy. He had a conduct rating that was exemplary. He had an active service record: 1986 in Lebanon; 1993, Somalia; 2004, Liberia; 2005, Liberia; 2006, Liberia; 2008, Chad; and 2010, Chad. He is therefore someone who served for a very long time this country on those missions, and he tells me that he was denied what is called a presentation when one retires.

I was not aware of this but it is a ceremony where a person is brought back in with his or her family as a "thank you" for service given. He and a number of his colleagues were denied this presentation because he had made a protected disclosure. That is his belief. He had made a protected disclosure about health and safety issues and other things, as he felt obliged to do. It was particularly about the use of dangerous chemicals and lack of proper safety precautions putting the health of Defence Forces personnel in danger. I do not have time to go through the details but he disclosed some quite shocking facts or certainly things that needed to be investigated. He was denied his presentation and was also denied being able to go to the WRC because apparently there is some obscure distinction between being a worker and an employee. When you are a member of the Defence Forces, you cannot go to the WRC over penalisation.

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