The Dáil has heard that several long-serving members of the Air Corps have been penalised for having made protective disclosures which flagged concerns over health and safety.
Richard Boyd Barrett, People Before Profit – Solidarity TD, said that the disclosures related to using “dangerous chemicals”, the inability of all members of a team to have children and the lack of oversight of officers who were never held to account.
As a result of “the failure of the top brass”, the Mr Boyd Barrett said, one of the whistle-blower’s “felt that he had to retire”.
The man was unable to bring a case before the Workplace Relations Commission as he was advised, “you’re not an employee, you’re a worker”.
He has now agreed to have his story recounted to the Dáil, Mr Boyd Barrett told the deputies present.
“Sergeant Patrick Gorman served for 35 years in the Air Corps” with “an exemplary conduct rating”, having served in Lebanon, Somalia, Liberia and Chad, sometimes on multiple tours of duty, said Mr Boyd Barrett.
“He blew the whistle about his treatment and the treatment of other members of the Defence Forces… who made protected disclosures and who were penalised as a result.”
Children exposed to ‘contaminated clothing’
“They were wearing gloves, for example, that disintegrated on contact with chemicals that they were been asked to use” on aircraft repairs, he said of Sgt Gorman’s experiences.
“He was working with them for 18 years without a respirator, and it was only in the last two years that they got the respirator.
“In a group of seven people working in the sheet metal structural repair shop, seven of the people couldn’t have children, which seems quite incredible.”
Mr Boyd Barrett revealed that some of the carcinogenic chemicals involved were referenced in the eponymous film about the famous US whistleblower, Erin Brockovich, who successfully sued a utility firm for hundreds of millions of dollars for contaminating drinking water.
“Paint strippers that were banned elsewhere, still being used in the Irish Defence Forces,” he said.
Soldiers were not warned about contaminated clothing which they wore “home to their kids”, and which led to “it being mixed in with the washing of children and the rest of the family, potentially contaminating them with dangerous chemicals”.
Read the full article on the RTE website…
https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2024/0502/1447056-dail-protected-discolsure/
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Sgt Gorman did the right thing in 2015/2016 by making Protected Disclosures to the Minister for Defence and the Health & Safety Authority which resulted in the HSA threatening legal action against Air Corps if they failed to implement urgent chemical health & safety reforms.
The Department’s own “O’Toole Report” and the almost three year HSA interventions fully vindicated Sgt Gorman. However, the response of the Irish Air Corps, the Department of Defence & successive Ministers (Coveney, Kehoe & Varadkar) was to ensure that Sgt Gorman was constructively dismissed.
The Air Corps Toxic Chemical Exposure Scandal broke in the Irish Examiner thanks to Joe Leogue in January 2017. Despite being raised in excess of twenty times in the Dáil, Seanad, Public Accounts Committee and even Varadkar’s confidence motion, this is the first time that RTE have reported on the scandal #106 dead.
Better late then never eh ?