Watch the Director of the State Claims Agency, Mr Ciarán Breen, give misleading evidence to the Dáil Public Accounts Committee 14/05/26.
Minister for Defence Helen McEntee mislead the Dáil a week previously on the same matter.
Transcript
(3 excerpts from full PAC meeting)
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
Sure. I thank Mr. Breen. I will ask specifically with regard to current and serving and also former Air Corps members. How many outstanding cases are open within the State Claims Agency regarding current or former Air Corps members?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Originally, we had 11 of those claims. We settled one claim. Following that claim, we received 13 more. Therefore, we have 24 cases now.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
Are they at various stages of process? When would the earliest of those 20 have been opened?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
In the case we settled, for example, my recollection is that proceedings were served in 2014 and the case was settled in 2025. The other cases are at different levels of engagement and readiness and so on.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
Would there be others from that 2014 era?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
I guess many of them would probably date back to that date and maybe dates after that.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
In Mr. Breen’s expertise, why would a case to be ongoing that long?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
When I answer this, I am not being critical at all of, obviously, when I say this but sometimes a plaintiff is in a very complex action like that because we are dealing with exposure to chemicals and generally an environment that alleges toxicity. Therefore, there are complex issues of liability and causation for both sides. If we add in discovery to that as well, we can see why we would get delays of, certainly, a good number of years. In the particular case that we settled, there were periods of relative inactivity. When I say that, I just mean legally. I am quite sure there was a lot of work being done in the background.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
Maybe it is not as simple as asking in whose court the ball lies for those cases, but does Mr. Breen think that would be with the State Claims Agency right now or would it be with the plaintiffs?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
When a plaintiff sues, really, the ball lies largely with the plaintiff, but we do not rely on that. What we try to do, wherever we can, if we acknowledge that the State has a liability, is try to make an approach ourselves and ask, if both sides are ready, whether we can settle this case on terms that are acceptable to both parties.
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Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
I welcome everybody here today. Following on from Deputy Neville’s questioning on wages and staffing, it seems to be a fantastic place to work when there are so many staff on such high salaries. Would I be correct in saying the salaries the witnesses are paid are much higher than civil servants in most other parts of Government?
Frank O’Connor (Chief Executive NTMA)
Looking at the data, the NTMA was set up 35 years ago and was designed to be a market-based private sector model to get people in to manage the asset liabilities of the State, so, yes, you would say that.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
Does Mr. O’Connor think that is fair?
Frank O’Connor (Chief Executive NTMA)
I do, and the reason is other people set up the agency on that basis. When you look at the scale of what is managed in the NTMA, in going to the market, funding that over €200 billion, doing it in a prudent way and managing the assets of the State, you need the talent in the room. When you are talking to asset and fund managers, you need to have people on both sides of the table who know what they are doing.
We have people doing payments – and we failed on this one payment – and we have people doing derivative transactions who need to know which side of the button to press on the FX, which currency we are trading in and all those different aspects. We need to have people of the appropriate skill and experience to do those jobs. The second thing is to get those people who are competing against the banks, law firms and engineering firms, etc., so, yes, I do.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
It sounds like a very good salary to me. In that regard, there were 270 personnel within the company who also received €2.5 million last year in State-related bonuses. Am I correct in saying that is all coming from Government funding?
Frank O’Connor (Chief Executive NTMA)
Absolutely. Regarding performance-related pay, again, that is another aspect of the pay models and other tools. It is non-pensionable performance-related pay and is common in the marketplace. We are probably a little different in that we publish the amounts and, generally, the average would be about €9,000 or €10,000 to about a third of the staff.
The one thing is we tend to disperse to more staff because all parts – the front and middle office – are important. Rather than pay large amounts to some people who might appear big, as the industry does, because it might incentivise the wrong risk-taking behaviour, we tend to disperse to between 30% and 40% of staff.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
I am interested in the State Claims Agency and the duty of care to those who have been wounded by Government policy, such as thalidomide sufferers, those with hepatitis C and now the Air Corps.
Is it the policy that staff get pay-related bonuses to help ensure that the State Claims Agency fights these cases every single step of the way and to try to break down plaintiffs and get them to withdraw their claims?
Frank O’Connor (Chief Executive NTMA)
Before I ask Ciarán to comment on the cases and the management of claims, to be very clear, performance-related pay is set on an agency-wide basis. It is not set for one business unit over another. The approach would never be to pay performance-related pay for a specific item to incentivise somebody to do a particular…..
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
What do they get the pay-related bonus for?
Frank O’Connor (Chief Executive NTMA)
The pay-related bonus depends on the performance of the individual in their overall duties and the performance of their business area in the wider NTMA.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
Is Mr. O’Connor telling me it has nothing to do with claims?
Frank O’Connor (Chief Executive NTMA)
People in the State Claims Agency are one cohort, who also get…..
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
They are getting pay-related bonuses for ensuring claims do not go through. Is that not the case?
Frank O’Connor (Chief Executive NTMA)
No, not that. It is for the performance of their duty overall to fulfil their mandate. They are not incentivised to do one specific thing over another. They must always do the job to the best of their ability.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
The State Claims Agency failed to spot chemical exposure of Air Corps personnel, even though it did health and safety audits from 2006 until 2026. Am I correct in saying that? It failed to see that, and that there was no adequate PPE.
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Maybe I can answer that because I am the director of the State Claims Agency. Our risk management team, comprising scientists, engineers and people qualified in environmental and fire safety, did carry out audits in Baldonnel in 2006 and 2007…..
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
They failed to see, however, that the staff were not wearing PPE.
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
I ask the Deputy to just bear with me for a minute as I want to explain. The particular area that is the impugned area was called the old engine repair flight workshop. By the time we carried out our audits in Baldonnel, that had been demolished or it was disused. I think it was disused in 2006 and demolished in 2007 so it was never, in fact, inspected by our risk management people. They could not have been aware of any issues with that particular workshop at the time.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
Were there no certificates of compliance from 2006?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
I might just explain to the Deputy what we do. Our risk management is to advise and assist State authorities. One of the things that we are most conscious about doing is to ensure that somewhere like the Air Corps, Navy or Army – just looking at them as a group – has in place safety performance management. That is what we do. We do some audits.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
When the team investigated this, however, was there safety performance management in place?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Yes
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
It was in place.
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Yes, when we went there in 2006 and 2007, we absolutely made sure that such performance management systems were in place, and they were. By the way, we did carry out spot audits of various parts of Baldonnel. Very often we commented negatively on things that we found.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
Did the team spot at that time that there was a failure to store carcinogenic and highly corrosive chemicals on the property? Did it see that?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
As I said, that flight workshop was gone when we did the audit. Generally, in terms of chemicals management, we have found that the Air Corps is adhering to proper practice.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
How many cases are there? Was it 24?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
We had 11 originally and 13 very recently.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Féin)
I have also been told that 65 Air Corps personnel died due to the health implications of what happened there. Where are those cases?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
We only deal with cases when we have claims in front of us. That is confined to the 24 that we have.
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John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
…..I want to return to the issue of the Air Corps. When was the first case lodged or taken?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
The earliest cases were probably lodged around 2013-2014.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
Again, for the record, why did it take so long for the case to be settled last year in 2025?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
It is obviously difficult for me to talk about any individual case because you will understand that we have to respect the confidentiality of any plaintiff. I can say this to you definitely; during that period of the time, from the time that the summons was originally served, there were delays following that in terms of how the file was progressed, not at our end.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
Were the delays on the other side?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
They were not on our end.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
It was not on the State Claims Agency’s end.
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
I am not saying that in any critical way, but there were delays until we finally got to settlement.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
Were there any disclosure actions taken against that discovery?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Yes, there were. The discovery was not actually in the case that was settled. The discovery was in respect of the lead case, which actually was not the case that was first settled. The Chair will probably be aware that in that particular case both the High Court and Court of Appeal upheld our discovery applications to limit discovery, and the Supreme Court overturned that finally.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
The State Claims Agency fully complied with that? Was the State Claims Agency found to have been in breach of the Supreme Court?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
There had been a breach by the Air Corps in that it had not made proper discovery. It was ordered to make proper discovery, which it ultimately did.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
This ultimately prolonged the case…..
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Yes, that did prolong it.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
…..so Mr. Breen’s prior statement that the delays were on the plaintiff’s side…..
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Sorry, I was not impugning the plaintiff at all. I said that there were delays there…..
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
There were delays.
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
…..and I agree with you that one of them was the breach in relation to the discovery. That did delay it.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
In relation to Baldonnel, I think the State Claims Agency portrayed the issue as solely down to the engine room. Is that where predominantly the chemical exposures took place? Am I right?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Certainly based on the claims as pleaded, the references are to the exposure over a period of time relative to that particular locus.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
When was the engine room demolished?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
I think it was in 2007.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
Mr. Breen said it was in 2006 earlier on.
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
No. I said that I think it was disused in 2006 and ultimately demolished in 2007.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
Was the engine room still in use up to September 2007?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
I am not sure. I honestly cannot tell you emphatically, but certainly what I recollect is that it had been taken out of use and then was finally demolished in 2007.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
I have an image in front of me from Google Maps from 2009 that clearly shows the engine room still fully intact. The image is dated May 2009. Is Mr. Breen correct with the information he gave that it was demolished in that timeframe?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
Sorry, I obviously was not there. I do not know when it was exactly. What I was told was that it was demolished in 2007.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
The evidence I have is that it was still fully intact in 2009. If the engine room was still in use up until September 2007, and this is the information I have, when did inspections of the engine room commence?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
We did not ever inspect that engine room on the State Claims Agency side, precisely for the reason that it was not actually in use.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
When did the avionic building on the right-hand side of the engine room cease being used?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
I do not know. I do not have that information.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
That ceased being used as a classroom in 2008-2009 and that was used by the Air Corps College. It has been reported that 14 persons prematurely died from that building. The information I have is that while there is an attempt to portray it solely as an issue around the engine room, 102 people are reported to have prematurely died as a result of chemical exposure and other serious failures throughout the rest of the airbase. Would…..
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
I have just seen those stories in the media but I cannot comment on that. I do not know any causal link between those deaths and Baldonnel as an employer.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Féin)
There are serious concerns that chemical exposure was rampant throughout Baldonnel. In Mr. Breen’s view, is that something that has been established?
Ciarán Breen (Director State Claims Agency)
In relation to the work that we carried out, and you can imagine that Baldonnel is a very big campus and it has many different parts to it, our audits were carried out in different parts of Baldonnel. Certainly in relation to our examination, the management of chemical hazards was in accordance with best standards in terms of all of the safety performance management paperwork we saw.
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A full transcript of the complete Public Accounts Committee meeting on Thursday the 14th of May 2026 can be viewed below.
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/committee_of_public_accounts/2026-05-14/3/
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