Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all the delegates. I want to turn first to the IRG, which is the foundation upon which the oversight body is established. Like Ms King, I have spent most of my life representing workers. A key element of representing workers is the principle that no man is guilty until proven so. As a former serving soldier, I was deeply upset to find the IRG was published as fact rather than untested evidence. In this regard, I have received a number of phone calls from members of the Defence Forces since I served, which was in the late 1970s, who were deeply concerned that they could in some way have their service to the country damaged or sullied by an untested report. From a veteran’s point of view, there seems to be a fixation on the issue of sexual abuse, which, incidentally, nobody I know of denies. Everybody I have spoken to says there must have been some of it but that they did not see any themselves or that they were aware of an incident. That is the sort of thing that has come back to me. Anybody who has served wants to see the outcome of a tribunal set up by the Government before giving it any credence. Maybe my question is unfair to ask. Do the members of the oversight body believe, like I do, that we should simply have called for a sworn inquiry and allowed it to take place in the proper way rather than publishing first and then defending? It reminds me of a company sergeant I worked with when I was in an Chéad Chath in Galway. During orders on a Monday, John would say, “March in the guilty man.” There is a touch of that about this IRG.