A senior officer has told the Defence Forces tribunal that he was surprised to hear apprentices would have been too “terrified” to complain about conditions in the apprentice school.

The Defence Forces Apprentice School was like a “family”, Colonel Fred O’Donovan told Friday’s hearing.

The veteran of missions in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Chad, Kosovo and Brussels was responding to questions from the tribunal judge Ms Justice Ann Power.

“It depends on the context but I would be surprised if it happened in my time,” Mr O’Donovan said of the school, which closed in 1998. “Not everyone is perfect but we do do our best.”

Earlier, Ms Power had also questioned Mr O’Donovan — who trained recruits at the school between 1995 and 1998 — about his statement that apprentices could “confront the person causing harm” to them.

On a previous day, it had emerged that a teenage Defence Forces apprentice’s death in 1991 at Devoy Barracks in Co Kildare was regarded as suicide within his platoon. As well as investigating his death, the Defence Forces had also investigated a complaint Oliver Mullaney had been mistreated by a superior officer just days before he died.

The bombshell revelation by Colonel Damien Coakley was the first time it had ever been made public that there were two Defence Forces investigations into Mr Mullaney’s death, and that it could have been caused by anything other than an accident.

Ms Justice Power had asked Mr O’Donovan what he would tell apprentices to do if they were not happy with the way a superior officer was testing them.

To his reply that he would tell them to “confront” the superior officer, the judge asked him if that was really a realistic course of action.

He replied: “Probably not.” But he added that, in his time, “there were no real issues” and there was a good “bond” between apprentices and their senior officers.

Read full article by Neil Michael at the Irish Examiner website below.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41857569.html

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