An information resource for serving & former members of the Irish Army Air Corps suffering illness due to unprotected toxic chemical exposure in the workplace.
A graph showing untimely deaths of men who served in the Irish Air Corps. We are counting those that died since 1980 (arbitrary) and who died on or before age 66 (state pension age).
On Wednesday the 7th of February 2018 in Dáil Éireann, Taoiseach, Dr. Leo Varadkar, said the place to investigate Irish Air Corps related deaths & illnesses was the Irish courts system and also bizarrely questioned why thousands of exposed personnel, exposed to hundreds of different toxic chemicals didn’t all get the same cancer?
Note the graph below only includes personnel for whom we have death certificates for. We are in the process of verifying approximately 30 more deaths, many of which relate to the earlier decades.
In the absence of military or government statistics on untimely deaths in the Irish Air Corps we created our own. We are happy to have these tested or even proven wrong by better statistics gathered by the state in a comprehensive, open and transparent manner. #WeAreNotStatisticians
A whistleblower’s warning that documents revealing unacceptable levels of chemical exposure in the Air Corps were deliberately destroyed was sent to the Department of Defence over a year before it looked for the documents — and discovered they are missing.
The Department of Defence only sought to find the documents after their alleged destruction was raised in the Dáil — more than 12 months after it received the whistleblower’s claim.
A protected disclosure sent to the then Minister of Defence Simon Coveney in December 2015 warned that a named senior member of the Air Corps destroyed reports, dating back to the 1990s, which raised concerns about the levels of toxic chemicals in workshops in Casement Aerodrome.
The same official was named in a subsequent disclosure by a second whistleblower who also alleged the documents were destroyed.
The years given by the whistleblower for the destroyed documents match those of inspection reports of Casement Aerodrome that the Department itself admits cannot be found.
When asked previously if there are plans to investigate the documents’ disappearance, junior defence minister Paul Kehoe has told the Dáil that he has been “advised by the military authorities that there are no plans to carry out an investigation into why these reports cannot be located.”
Read full article on Irish Examiner website below…
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he believes the courts should decide whether former Air Corps staff are suffering chronic illnesses due to chemical exposure.
Mr Varadkar made the comments yesterday in the Dáil where Sinn Féin Defence Spokesperson Aengus O’Snodaigh repeated calls for a health study of Air Corps members, similar to an analysis of Australian Air Force staff, which found technicians who worked with carcinogenic chemicals were at greater risk of illness.
Last year, the Irish Examiner revealed the State is facing a number of claims from former staff, and that whistleblowers had raised concerns about the safety of workers using chemicals at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel.
“While I have absolutely no doubt that the serious ill-health suffered by some former members of the Air Corps is real, it has not been proven whether this array of illnesses could be caused by chemical exposure,” Mr Varadkar said.
“There is litigation in the courts, which are the best place to assess the evidence and see whether the allegations are supported by that evidence,” he said.
Mr O’Snodaigh said a survey is needed as the implications of widespread staff exposure to the chemicals used goes beyond the seven cases currently against the State. “We do not want to be here in 10 years’ time with a higher death toll, having failed to address this scandal,”he said.
Read full article on Irish Examiner website below…
The vast majority of Irish Air Corps Chemical Abuse Survivors are not currently engaged in legal action. For these serving and former personnel the Taoiseach is offering them no respite, not assistance and no hope.
Labour leader Brendan Howlin is not satisfied with the Government’s response to the Air Corps chemical exposure scandal, and has called for an external review of the allegations.
In the absence of military or government statistics on untimely deaths in the Irish Air Corps we created our own. We are happy to have these tested or even proven wrong by better statistics gathered by the state in a comprehensive, open and transparent manner. #WeAreNotStatisticians
The State is facing seven High Court claims from former Air Corps technicians, who say they suffer chronic illnesses due to exposure to toxic chemicals while they were cleaning and servicing aircraft.
A number of whistleblowers have made protected disclosures about working conditions in Air Corps headquarters at Casement Aerodrome. The Health and Safety Authority subsequently investigated, and threatened legal action, unless the Defence Forces improved worker safety.
Mr Howlin raised the issue in the Dáil last month, and has since received correspondence from the Government.
“I’ve raised it with the Taoiseach directly and I’ve gotten a two-page response from the minister with responsibility for defence, and I’m not satisfied,” Mr Howlin said. “There needs to be at least an expert-review panel set up to look into this in some detail.”
However, Mr Howlin did not call for a full commission of investigation, but said that the findings of an external review should determine whether such a process is necessary.
“Whether a full tribunal of investigation is required remains to be seen, but the first step to that is to have an external, expert review, and that needs to happen immediately, and I certainly will be pressing for that,” he said.
This review should include a health study of Air Corps members past and present to determine if they have a higher prevalence of chronic conditions compared to the general public, he said.
“That would have to be a critical part of the review, because, once the fears are there, they have to be empirically checked out,” Mr Howlin said.
“They are either fact or not fact. There’s no point in people either dismissing them, or saying it’s a fact. We need to have external, independent, authoritative decisions on these matters.”
Read full article on Irish Examiner website below…
A NEW PROTECTED disclosure has been sent to Defence Minister Paul Kehoe detailing a number of “verified deaths” of those allegedly affected by the Air Corps chemical scandal.
It’s the contention of a number of Air Corps members, who have since retired, that the effects of the chemicals they handled as part of their work contributed to dozens of workers at the Baldonnel Airfield becoming ill.
In a protected disclosure made by one of the workers last year, it has also been alleged that the partners of male members of the force suffered serious fertility issues and a number of miscarriages. Other children, according to the previous protected disclosure, are living with life-changing illnesses and, in some cases, have died.
But a new disclosure, submitted last week, claims that the number of untimely deaths from the scandal has “grown exponentially”.
Denying access to toxic chemical records will deny Air Corps personnel proper medical treatment. #GetAngry#IrishAirCorps#DefenceForces#DefenceForcesIsCostingLives
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
Priority Question No. 2
To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence his plans to carry out a medical or health audit of serving and former members of the Air Corps similar to that undertaken in Australia in order to identify those that may have been exposed on an ongoing basis to toxic chemicals during their service. [3490/18]
Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)