Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Secretary General of the Department of Defence, Ms Jacqui McCrum, is a person of considerable ability and of the upmost integrity who has come to the Department and the role from a background in international finance and banking. I know that she would not mind my saying that she cut her teeth in international finance and banking in the city in London during the 1990s. I imagine, from a gender equality perspective, it would be like spending time in Jurassic Park with all the predatory creatures you might find there. Jacqui Mc Crum is an exceptional Secretary General of the Department and I have no doubt that in her tenure she will bring Óglaigh na hÉireann through the process of transformation that it so badly needs. I have said in the House previously and it is set out in my PhD dissertation, that in 1922 we inherited the physical infrastructure that the British Army left behind. For some reason, Óglaigh na nÉireann, or the Irish Free State Army, adopted the cultural infrastructure of the British Army of the 1920s. It is overly hierarchical; fetishistic in terms of power differences between people; it has an artificial class divide within in it; and it needs to be decolonised. Our Defence Forces have to move from being one based on ritual and an anachronistic echo of our colonial past to being an evidence-based, diverse, inclusive and effective military for the 21st century, which it is not. The way the military operates, and I am intimately acquainted with this for the last 23 years, is that when someone is charged with a sexual offence, they break it down into sample charges, 168s which are administrative offences, so that it does come under the radar of serious sex offences. I have given expert reports at court cases where I have seen serious sexual assaults broken down in this absolutely scurrilous practice in an effort to diminish the offence and in that way the offenders have escaped.

There is also a practice in the recent past of requiring people who have brought claims of sexual assault and harassment to sign non-disclosure agreements, NDAs. For shame. How dare taxpayers’ money be used in this way to coerce or persuade people to sign an NDA around this very sensitive issue. This is not the fault of the Secretary General of the Department and I would give the Chief of Staff the benefit of the doubt for now in that he is newly appointed and has stated his commitment to ending this practice. However, the way the Defence Forces operates is exactly the same way the Catholic Church operated when the first properly concerted efforts to reveal clerical child sex abuse began. The church relied on canon law to conceal and to diminish the problem and make it go away.

Unfortunately, he is not here now but Senator McDowell, when he was Minister for Justice, said in frustration at the time that canon law should have the status of the rules of a golf club and that henceforth all issues around clerical child sex abuse should be dealt with in the criminal courts. It is exactly the same for our Defence Forces. Their internal military police and internal canon law, that is, military law, should not be used as a mechanism to deal with these serious offences. They should be dealt with by the criminal courts. I am echoing the advice that senior female officers gave to me and their subordinates: if a female soldier, sailor or aircrew is sexually assaulted, do not go to the military police; do not go through the chain of command; go to An Garda Síochána and report it. At least then it will be investigated and charges will possibly be brought through the DPP’s office. However, if we rely on the system of the Army investigating itself, we will face this completely and utterly deficient system.

I reiterate that we need to support our Defence Forces in this moment of change. Here on International Women’s Day, we have an opportunity to do what the Minister of State knows instinctively is the right thing to do. Everybody in this House knows that this is the right thing to do. They have used a loophole to evade, avoid, elide, and get away and hide and diminish this problem. It has been going on for too long.What makes me really angry is that I know that hundreds of young men and women have had life-altering and life-limiting experiences of sexual assault in the Defence Forces. I gave the warning 23 years ago and am saying it here again. This amendment needs to be accepted. I appreciate the Minister of State's good offices, integrity and utmost good faith. I do not envy him his position in rejecting it here today. I would argue that there is a categorical moral and ethical imperative to accept this amendment.