Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will go back to my time as president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, TUI. I remember making a statement one day and at the following executive meeting, one of the executive members asked who had given me permission to make the bloody statement. He said that there was an executive committee and its role was to decide what I could and could not say. We have an additional restriction the representative bodies of the Defence Forces because of this section. That would not apply to any other representative body. Members are answerable to their executive and membership and to no one else. The nuance here is that if we get the wrong Minister or Chief of Staff in place a statement made by one of the representative bodies could result in members being told to get themselves in and explain themselves because they made that statement as a recognisable member of the Defence Forces. I fully accept what the Minister said about the phrase "without prejudice". I go back to the same thing. If the Minister removes the phrase "all matters of Government policy" we can move on from this. It is a simple enough request.