Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

What I am about to say will be of great interest to the Acting Leader because of her connection with the Defence Forces. There was a lot of discussion of the independent review group, which, incidentally, concerned a series of allegations. Nothing has been proven as yet and we are waiting for a sworn inquiry into that. However, revelations over the past day or two in The Journalrevealed correspondence between the Chief of Staff and the Secretary General of the Department of Defence. That Department pulled or ceased to allow the independent monitoring group, IMG, that had been set up following Senator Clonan's thesis on bullying and harassment in the Defence Forces. For no understandable reason, the IMG, which the Acting Leader has spoken to me about in the past, was stood down in 2018, when it was achieving some very good results.

The correspondence released under freedom of information, FOI, in the past few days shows there was a serious division between the Secretary General of the Department and the Chief of Staff of the day. The Chief of Staff was 100% committed to the IMG but the Secretary General stood that group down with no plan. There was no plan to move to the independent review group, which was subsequently set up following the complaints made by Women of Honour. As the Acting Leader will agree, the important thing is the IMG should have continued. The Chief of Staff is the person on the ground in uniform who knows what is going on and he should have been listened to at the time. It was outrageous that this was pulled. For that reason, the Acting Leader will agree that the Department of Defence must be part of the oversight. We cannot have members of that Department who are acting as both gatekeeper and rogue. We need nobody from the Department of Defence on the oversight group that is being put together. I ask the Acting Leader to relay that to the Taoiseach and Tánaiste.