Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am really glad Ms King mentioned that, that it is primary legislation. There is a perception that the complaints process was conjured up by the Defence Forces to keep complaints within the organisation. However, as Ms King has quite rightly pointed out, a lot of these processes were conjured up by politicians and people external to the Defence Forces and these rules were imposed on the Defence Forces.

It is funny that it was mentioned that people did not know who the witnesses were when they showed up in Cork. I was that soldier around 2002 or 2003 when the Dr. Eileen Doyle commission came in to see us. As a result of this commission, these new complaints processes were brought in. I will not say they were imposed on the Defence Forces but they were told these were the new procedures. Nobody in the Defence Forces said they were going to come up with the most convoluted system that will never work and conspire against their staff. Many of these rules have been extracted from primary legislation and made a Defence Forces regulation. These regulations are inappropriately named because they are not designed by the Defence Forces. The Minister designs them, the Department drafts them and they are imposed on the Defence Forces. Therefore, if there is a problem with the complaints process, it is not only an issue for the Defence Forces. Many people have spoken to me hoping to God there would be a good complaints process at the end of this process because the last complaints process that was imposed on us 20 years ago was not fit for purpose. The only point I am trying to get across is that there are external factors at play regarding the complaints process and we should not be exclusively pointing the finger at the Defence Forces. We should not be pointing the finger at anybody, but it is not a uniquely Defence Forces phenomenon.