The minister for defence and his officials are being asked why they did not check — while visiting the UN General Assembly last week — that the exit paperwork for 130 Irish troops currently stranded in the Middle East was properly completed.

A landmark case won by the association representing the country’s frontline Defence Forces is expected to open the floodgates for further claims against the Department of Defence.

Officers in the Defence Forces feel betrayed by their employers, because military personnel were left out of “side deals” given to gardaí, prison officers, and firefighters as part of the latest Lansdowne Road pay agreements.

An adjudicator for the Defence Forces has claimed it was “bizarre” that a dispute over allowances, paid to a soldier on a Department of Defence overseas training course, should have lasted 16 years.

Organisations representing officers and enlisted men in the Naval Service have criticised the lengthy delay in awarding what they term as a rightful allowance to crews working on the humanitarian rescue mission in the Mediterranean Sea.

WHEN the issue of sending Irish troops to the Asian tsunami disaster zone cropped up, it was bound to raise questions.