Tag: State Claims Agency

‘We need to be vindicated. Friends are dead or dying’ : Air Corps report due this week

IRISH AIR CORPS whistleblowers say they hope an independent report due to be published this week will corroborate their claims that safety procedures around chemicals at Baldonnel Airfield put them at risk.

In the last 12 months, at least six former members of the Defence Forces have started legal proceedings against the State, alleging that they were exposed to toxic levels of chemicals and that a lack of protective equipment has left them with lifelong illnesses.

In January of this year, Junior Defence Minister Paul Kehoe ordered that an independent investigation be conducted by former Attorney General senior official Christopher O’Toole. The complainants have been told this crucial report will be released this week.

Read full article on The Journal website below…

Dáil Éireann Written Answers 20/09/17 – Department of Defence – Defence Forces Properties

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

817. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence if the State Claims Agency has been tasked with taking health and safety risk assessments at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel; the date on which these assessments commenced; if they are still ongoing; the findings of these health and risk assessments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39834/17]

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)

I am advised that the State Claims Agency do not undertake health and safety risk assessments in the Defence Forces. This function is the responsibility of the Defence Forces.

With regard to the Air Corps, the Deputy will be aware that the Health and Safety Authority (HSA), following a number of inspections in 2016, issued a Report of Inspection to the Air Corps on 21 October 2016, listing a number of matters requiring attention which included the areas of risk assessment.

The Air Corps as a consequence of this HSA report have implemented an improvement plan which is being conducted over eight phases. Seven of the eight phases have now been fully completed. The final phase is a continuous ongoing process. The implementation plan focuses on a number of areas, including risk assessments.

State has plenty of questions left to answer over Air Corps

Health and safety issues in the Air Corps have not gone away. Why is an investigation not underway, Joe Leogue wants to know

Revelations that the Air Corps has doubts over its own health and safety management raises further questions about the State’s treatment of former members who now suffer a litany of illnesses that they claim came as a result of their exposure to toxic chemicals.

Today’s Irish Examiner reveals that an internal Air Corps report from 2014 cast doubt over whether adequate protection was given to technicians who would have worked with cancer-causing solvents on a daily basis. It also states that staff could have ingested the airborne chemical because their tea room was in an adjacent room, and that their clothes could have been contaminated due to their lockers being in the room where the chemical was used.

The Air Corps could not find any records stating its staff had received any training on the dangers of the chemicals they were tasked with using.

The details of this report come a week after this newspaper revealed that the Government “cannot locate” documents that opposition TDs say show that health and safety concerns were raised more than 20 years ago.

The 2014 report’s admissions make the State’s refusal to investigate potential links between the workers’ illnesses and their exposure more inexplicable.

It also calls into question the State’s decision to drag claims made by former staff through the courts.

Read more on the Irish Examiner website.