Air Corps chemical poisoning: Betrayal, legal battles, and a decade-long fight for justice
Ex-Air Corps member Gary Coll from Lifford, Co Donegal. Picture: Joe Dunne
Meeting Micheál Martin on Wednesday, June 21, 2017 is a moment that is etched on Gary Coll’s brain.
As the then leader of the opposition, the now Taoiseach spent the best part of an hour with the former air corps aviation technician and five of his colleagues in Leinster House.
They had met him, at his invitation, to plead their case about the need for urgent State intervention into the issues around chemical poisoning in the air corps.
At the time, around 40 air corps personnel under the age of 65 were understood to died in the previous 27 years from suicide, cardiovascular events and cancer.
Hundreds more were suffering a raft of chemical exposure-related illnesses.
They all mostly maintained aircraft without using PPE, and with little or no training or advice about the toxic chemicals they were either working with or in the vicinity of.
At the end of the meeting Mr Martin, who went on to become Taoiseach in June 2020, vowed to be an advocate to their cause.
Just before the meeting concluded, Gary limped over to him and asked if he would still support air corps chemical exposure survivors when he became Taoiseach.
Gary, who last Wednesday was awarded €2m in a settlement to his High Court claim for damages against the State, recalled: “He looked me firmly in the eye, and — as he shook my hand — said he would because it was, in his words, ‘the right thing to do’.”
Gary bristles with anger as he recalls the moment.
“He turned out to be nothing of the sort when it came to air corps chemical poisoning survivors. He turned his back on us from the moment he got into power.”
His handling of the air corps survivors since that meeting in 2017 is not something Mr Martin ever discusses in public, despite being repeatedly asked about it by the Irish Examiner over the years.
Instead, different departmental staff or advisers have said that while matters relating to air corps chemical poisoning are before the courts, he cannot comment.
Mr Martin’s refusal to be drawn on the issue is similar to a previous taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who insisted in February 2018 that the best place to address air corps chemical exposure claims was the courts.
They are, he told the Dáil that year, “the best place to assess the evidence and see whether the allegations are supported by that evidence”.
Mr Coll said: “Mr Martin’s silence is in stark contrast to the time, also in 2017, when he roundly castigated the then taoiseach Enda Kenny over his lack of action for air corps survivors.
“At the time, he described, on the floor of the Dáil, what had happened to us as ‘a horror story’.
“He stood there and demanded a full investigation, saying it was a ‘serious scandal’.
“I watched him and I was very, very impressed.
“Seeing the way he took on Enda Kenny, I felt so assured that this was the man who was going to get to the bottom of this and sort it out.
As well as not being able to walk unaided, Mr Coll suffers from chronic fatigue and has issues with his heart, his memory, recurring ulcers, and is unable to maintain his core body temperature.
“I could be freezing beside a fire, or hot standing in a snowstorm,” he explained.
His illnesses stem from the years he spent in the air corps from 1991 to 1997.
He joined as an athletic teenager who went on to represent the air corps in national and international rugby and rowing tournaments.
He was regarded as an elite athlete, and could — before his health started to fail him — run 10k in 30 minutes.
His exposure to chemicals, including a tubbing incident — during which he was forced by air corps personnel into a tub of toxic chemicals to mark his 21st birthday — led to his hair going white and tremors in his hands.
Now unable to work, he has had to survive on allowances and benefits.
His wife Sheila, who gave up her work as a Bank of Ireland Finance Manager to be his carer, remembers how he changed in the run up to his departure from the air corps.
She told the : “When I met him, he was the life and soul of the party.
“He was great fun, he was very laid back and he was also extremely fit.
“But within a few years, he changed. He didn’t just lose his fitness, but his personality changed too. He became more anxious, more withdrawn and more aggressive.
“In his fight for justice, both of us have been portrayed by the air corps as liars who just made the whole thing up.”
Statements from ministers — that they are not able to comment because a matter is before the courts or that the courts are the right place for their issues to be aired — always irritate Gary.
“Successive ministers will always avoid talking about us for one simple reason: neither the air corps or the Irish State will accept they did anything wrong.
“This whole line about the courts being the best place to air our grievances is an utter fallacy. The reality is that the State most definitely does not want any of our grievances aired in open court.
"People have to please believe us — we are not making things up, bad things did happen but the Irish State is absolutely refusing to either admit what happened or to even let us air our grievances in an open court. They just want to keep denying anything happened and repeatedly delay any legal actions we take.
“There are repeated delays providing any of us with information we are legally entitled to and — in the case of one of my colleagues — even though there was a Supreme Court ruling compelling them to provide information, they still refused."
Coll is proud of the fact that he refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement and that he refused to agree to the State being able to say his settlement last Wednesday was done “without any admission of liability”.
Back in his native Donegal at the weekend, he insisted: “They put documents before the court that accused me of lying and they — in effect — attempted to destroy my character. They were vicious and nasty and I just dug my heels in even further.
“As a community, we will never give up, and people like Micheál Martin can just hang their heads in shame.”
"I am 51, and I have a few years left to live."
Officially, the State Claims Agency (SCA) wouldn't comment on Mr Coll's case.
Instead, it stated that it “seeks to act fairly, ethically and sensitively in dealing with people who have suffered injuries and/or damage”.
It also said that in cases where the SCA investigation “concludes the relevant State authority bears some or all liability” then it seeks to settle claims “expeditiously and on fair and reasonable terms”.
Gary said: “That may well be the official line about how it operates.
“But if it is so ‘expeditious’, why did it take them more than 10 years to decide to settle? They fought me every step of the way, and there was nothing fair about the way they behaved.
“A small example is the way it took them more than 10 years to offer me a measly sum, in the expectation I would take it and go away. I didn't go away, and none of the other survivors are going away either.
"We are going to keep fighting the State until such time as it does the decent thing and accept responsibility for what happened."
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