Women of Honour appeal to Tánaiste not to proceed with 'flawed' inquiry 

Members of the Women of Honour group Roslyn O'Callaghan, Yvonne O Rourke, Honor Murphy and Diane Byrne. The group said anything less than a full public tribunal of inquiry will be seen as 'concealment'. Picture: Damien Storan/PA

The Women of Honour are appealing to the Tánaiste not to ram through “flawed” terms of reference for the inquiry into abuse in the Defence Forces.

The group has been invited to meet with Micheál Martin to discuss the Government’s statutory inquiry into the Defence Forces.

The decision to hold the inquiry followed the publication in March of a review into allegations of brutal and “sadistic” abuse — including the rape of both male and female soldiers.

The Defence Forces-Independent Review Group (DF-IRG) report concluded that “at best, the Defence Forces barely tolerates women and at its worst, verbally, physically, sexually and psychologically abuses women in its ranks”.

The report also found that “patriarchy, access to women’s bodies, viewing women as sexual objects, and the belief that seniority brings ‘privileges and protection’ are attitudes supported by notions about gender from the last century, or even the one before that”.

The inquiry will, the Government says, investigate whether there have been serious systemic failures in the Defence Forces' complaints system in relation to interpersonal issues, including “but not limited to sexual misconduct”.

A spokeswoman for the Women of Honour victims of Defence Forces abuse said: “The Tánaiste has notified us he does not plan to make any significant changes to the terms of reference for an inquiry and plans to put his proposals to government next Tuesday.

“We will be opposing this and will be communicating this to all other party leaders.

The Department of Defence is having too much influence in this matter and it is why the Tánaiste, who is Minister for Defence, is seeing fit to ignore victims. We believe it is a conflict of interest to have the Department of Defence involved in influencing the Government to decide whether firstly it should be a tribunal of inquiry in public and secondly the remit of that inquiry.

“The Department of Defence seeks to make the terms of reference as narrow as possible to avoid its own culpability.”

They added: “Women of Honour have always engaged in good faith with the Tánaiste and we hope he will change his mind even at this late hour.

“We will be asking him not to proceed to the Government next week unless there is evidence of agreement with the bulk of victims’ representative bodies.”

They said anything less than a full public tribunal of inquiry with “appropriate” terms of reference will be seen as “concealment” and “secrecy”.

In an email to other victims of abuse, Mr Martin said that he has had “extensive engagement” with the Attorney General on the nature of the inquiry and the terms of reference.

“I discussed the range of comments and observations received,” he said.

“There have been changes made to the terms of reference but overall, they remain substantively the same.

“The Attorney General is confident most of the issues raised will be covered by the terms of reference and the Judge will have enough discretion to make his own decisions as the Inquiry progresses.”

He added that he now intends to bring proposals to the Cabinet next week and to seek approval “to progress the statutory inquiry”.