Air Corps official denies documents destroyed
An Air Corps official has rejected claims that inspection reports at the centre of legal cases against the State were deliberately destroyed, describing the allegations as malicious, writes
The rebuke of the claims is contained in a series of emails between the Defence Forces and the Department of Defence, which has been seen by the Irish Examiner.
The State faces legal action from several former Air Corps technicians who claim the Defence Forces failed to adequately protect them from the harmful effects of the toxic chemicals they used on a daily basis.
Four whistleblowers have made protected disclosures on health and safety issues within the Air Corps — with two alleging that inspection reports show the Defence Forces were aware of safety shortcomings in the 1990s were deliberately destroyed as part of a cover-up.
However, Comdt Mark Donnelly, the Air Corps formation safety adviser, rejected these claims, and said the missing reports were “misplaced with the passage of time”.
“AC Formation and former Formation safety personnel have already commented on their concerns regarding these allegations,” Comdt Donnelly wrote in an email on March 8.
“These allegations of deliberate destruction of such documents are completely unfounded. It is my opinion that these comments are intended to be inflammatory, vexatious and malicious.”
The email is one of a number of correspondences released to Sinn Féin’s defence spokesman, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, who submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Defence seeking all documents relating to the department’s attempts to find the documents.
The majority of the correspondences discuss a previous request from this newspaper for the release of the reports and detail the failure to locate the documents in question.
Responding to Mr Ó Snodaigh’s Dáil query on June 20, junior defence minister Paul Kehoe said the reports may have been “misplaced over time” and ruled out an independent investigation into their disappearance.
However, correspondence between the Defence Forces and the department in May suggest the decision not to hold any such probe was made by the military authorities and not the minister.
Mr Ó Snodaigh said the content of the emails “doesn’t reassure” him that all efforts have been made to establish what happened to the documents.
He said whistleblowers have provided him with copies they obtained of the missing reports, and that he has passed these onto Mr Kehoe and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
This story first appeared in the Irish Examiner.
