Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-25
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

Fundamentally, in any organisation, it is about the culture. In all of the work that has been done within the Defence Forces, the one word that kept emerging in terms of all the analysis, inquiries and so on was "culture". There are numerous policies in respect of these issues but the biggest difficulty and challenge is around culture. Changes are occurring in the Defence Forces, which should be acknowledged given what has happened, and also within An Garda Síochána. Interestingly, there was a lot of resistance from those organisations to utilisation of the word "culture" and to highlighting the fact there is a problem with the culture. There was a lot of resistance at times to even articulating that in any documents pertaining to the Defence Forces. That has been my experience. To me, however, culture is the fundamental issue that underpins behaviour like this occurring on a regular basis.
It is something that has to be worked on on a consistent, constant basis to change the culture of organisations. I will revert to the Deputy.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-25