Former army member Alan Nolan voiced his concerns over policy and treatment in the Defence Forces, but instead of being listened to at the time, he was ‘screamed at, shouted at, sworn at’
Alan Nolan said: 'From the moment I started standing up for myself against being mistreated, the higher ranks just came right back at me.' Picture: Larry Cummins
Whenever army veteran Alan Nolan watches BBC Earth wildlife documentaries, the former infantry soldier and army paramedic is often reminded of his army years. He recalls David Attenborough's footage of crocodiles attacking a herd of watering wildebeest in Tanzania’s Grumeti River in particular.
The herd is at first stunned and motionless as hungry crocodiles suddenly spring up out of the shallow shoreline waters, their wide-open jaws quickly clamping down on their hapless prey.
The herd can only look on as each animal struggles for survival before being dragged under the water and devoured.
In other documentaries, the predators might happen to be lions, or leopards, but either way, the herd is rarely much use to the unfortunate beasts picked by the predators.
“When a fellow soldier is being picked on by a bully or a group of bullies, there is always an understanding among soldiers that we should never let them break us, and never let the bullying get to them,” he says looking back.
“But in reality, when the attack happens, there is very little the rest of the platoon can do about it.
“If you ever look at a documentary in Africa, you will see a Wildebeest with an injured leg and the lions are circling. You will know that there is nothing the rest of the herd can do for that wildebeest with the injured leg.
That's pretty much what it is like in the military when a fella becomes a target. That soldier’s group of fellow privates can't turn round to an NCO and say ‘sergeant, you are being very unfair to private so-and-so, we think you should stop’.
“It doesn't work like that, because that would be considered gross insubordination or a breach of discipline and that will never be tolerated.
“So you have a situation where you have bullying and mistreatment that is often masquerading as discipline.
“But at the end of the day, bullying and mistreatment will always be bullying and mistreatment.”
Alan, a former Company Sergeant who left the army in 2017, says his own life was made a misery early on in his career after he tried to have his record cleared of a false report lodged on his military file.
He was reprimanded for being late for work at Collins Barracks in Cork in 1996 the morning after he had spent all night in Cork University Hospital’s emergency department with his young daughter.
Alan disputed the way the matter had been handled and eventually a very senior officer came up with the idea of having the reprimand taken off his military file.
But he later found out it hadn’t been removed and then when he took the matter to the internal Defence Forces Redress of Wrongs process, which is supposed to deal with soldiers’ complaints, he endured “more hell”.
So, by the time he put in a Protected Disclosure in 2017 about deficiencies in the way private medical data is handled in the Defence Forces in addition to other serious wrongdoings, he had given up all hope for any chance of fair treatment in the army.
His protected disclosure was made after the army introduced a digital records system he warned was too susceptible to being abused. He repeated the same disclosure in 2022, and it is currently being probed by the Data Protection Commissioner.
Added to that, a Defence Forces investigation is still underway into one of a number of data protection breaches of the military’s electronic health record system.
The latest investigation centres on the alleged actions of a healthcare worker at a military medical facility. The Defence Forces has said it is the third alleged breach in relation to the electronic military medical records system Socrates in five years. It is the second incident to be reported this year so far.
Last March’s report by the Independent Review Group panel into the Defence Forces included concerns around access and management of patient medical records within the Defence Forces, as well as highlighting abuse, persecution, victimisation and penalisation of soldiers.
In January, it emerged the medical data of up to 50 soldiers — including one who had died — was allegedly accessed without authorisation.
In the latest alleged breach involving Socrates, the healthcare worker had access to the records of at least one soldier in whose care they were not involved.
Alan warned the Defence Forces in 2015 that Socrates within the Defence Forces setting was not fit for purpose — warnings that, more than eight years later, he is finally being asked about by the Department of Defence.
Part of Alan's duties as the senior medical NCO was to ensure the proper handling of medical records in accordance with Defence Forces regulations (DFRs), but he could see that the new procedures were contrary to this.
He recently had a meeting with Department of Defence secretary-general Jacqui McCrum to discuss his concerns about data protection issues and protected disclosures, and other wrongdoings he has made about them.
He also recently met the senior staff of the Data Protection Commissioner by online video conference.
However, when he was in the army and working in the Central Medical Unit when the records system was brought in, nobody wanted to talk to him.
He says this attitude was always there, right from the very start of his career.
“I was screamed at, shouted at, sworn at and basically told that I had ‘fucked myself’ and my career by complaining about the way I had been treated in 1996, and on multiple other occasions,” he said.
“They never let me forget it and that culture still exists today.”
He fears many other soldiers may also have similar issues in their careers.
“You are pulled up out of the blue for no reason. This is especially the case if you dare to stick your head above the army parapet.
“I was always one of those people who believed in and tried to live by Defence Forces values.”
According to the website, these include integrity and the fact that each soldier should be “truthful, reliable and honourable”. Respect is another one, and the fact that each soldier “must treat comrades with dignity, respect, tolerance, and understanding”. Alan said:
I ascribed to all those values but the one I really liked was the Defence Forces’ value for so-called ‘moral courage’. This dictates that you must do what you know is right, not what is easier or popular.
“How wrong I and so many others have been over the years to think about doing what we know to be right when the reality is you will be severely punished for doing just that.
“The people that ran the Irish army when I was in it appeared to have little interest in anybody's moral courage.”
He shudders when he thinks back over a relentless “war” of attrition waged against him by senior officers who resented the fact that he had complained against one of them. But he is reduced to the verge of tears when he talks about what happened to one of his good friends, Gary Prendergast.
The 27-year-old died by suicide in Collins Barracks, in Cork, on Christmas Eve 2000 after another soldier made a series of allegations against him that he was never given any chance to defend himself against.
“The army, for one reason or another, did not give Gary a full chance to respond to the allegations against him by the other soldier.
“What really got to him was the way the army turned on him.”
The stress of dealing with the case plunged him into depression.
In 2000, he decided to take the matter to the Redress of Wrongs process but Alan had warned him that it would have a really detrimental impact on him. It did, he got nowhere, and the 27-year-old eventually killed himself on Christmas Eve in 2000.
“I remember the conversation about the Redress of Wrongs to this day,” Alan recalled. “I was working in the Medical Unit in Collins Barracks running the Outpatients Department and Gary came over to see me.
“We popped outside the department for more privacy so nobody could overhear our conversation and he told me he was going to take the way he had been treated further.
"Gary explained that he was intending to submit a Redress of Wrongs for the way he had been mistreated.
“He was really upset and angry about the way the army had turned their backs on him.”
His case was brought up in the recent Independent Review Group panel investigation into abuse and mistreatment.
It was also brought up with the Defence Minister Micheál Martin but to date, despite calls from Gary’s family for his name to be cleared, nothing has happened.
“Gary was a good soldier, a hard worker and utterly devoted to the army. But the big mistake he made was complaining about the behaviour of another soldier.
People who could have intervened, who could have helped are doing alright for themselves while Gary lies in a graveyard.
Alan, who left the army in 2017, is only too aware of more recent events.
The Irish Examiner recently revealed that a Non-Commissioned Officer armed with a pistol ordered soldiers to fight each other after he returned back to a military facility from a pub.
People were chosen to fight according to how they answered questions about who they did or didn’t like, it is alleged.
There is even a claim that soldiers were locked in cages in between fights.
When asked if she had heard anything, it took Diane Byrne - of the Women of Honour campaign group for victims of abuse in the Defence Forces - just ten minutes to confirm details of the incident.
It didn’t take her long to also find out that there may have been other incidents that happened, including cases where soldiers suffered concussion and hyperthermia.
Her contacts told her about “some form of kangaroo court set up and so-called justice meted out to soldiers" by more senior members of staff.
No single incident of such brutality happened in Alan’s 32-year career in the Defence Forces.
But he has never forgotten the constant shouting and screaming at him by senior officers, and the constant threats about destroying him and the constant sabotage to his career.
Within just under one year of entering Collins barracks in Cork, a notorious army bully and an NCO had singled him out for - as Alan sees it - no other reason but that he could.
“I very quickly learned that bullies of all types thrive in the army environment,” he said.
My bullying apprenticeship, if you want to call it that, started on the day I was made a third-star private in 1986. At the time, I was thriving. I was awarded the Best Shot in our recruit platoon, and I absolutely loved being in the army.
“Out of the blue, I was charged without even knowing why.
“An NCO pulled me up one day and said the officer in charge wanted to see me and that it would just be like being in front of the headmaster in school.
“I was baffled but he said it was just something small that had been picked up and when charged, I was just to plead guilty.
“It would be no big deal and wouldn’t mean anything. He told me ‘Don't waste your time. Just say guilty and march out of the door’.
“So, I marched in the room and in front of the officer who was sitting behind a table.
“The officer said to me that my behaviour was completely out of character and that he was very surprised.
“I was standing there almost with a smile on my face, thinking this was some kind of joke or a test or even a game. Then I saluted him, turned on my heels and marched back out the door. t was over in seconds.
“Standing at the door was an NCO and he had a big smirk on his face.
“There was something about the smirk and his attitude afterwards that the penny finally dropped and I asked what I had been found guilty of.
“It turns out I had been charged with disobeying a lawful order when I had never done such a thing, ever.
“That was the turning point for me and I decided from then on, nobody would ever make a fool out of me like that again in the army.
Alan Nolan, ex-defence forces, relaxing at home tying fishing flies. He said he is all too aware of certain derogatory practices still present in the Defence Forces. Picture: Larry Cummins
“That was both a good thing, and my biggest mistake because from the moment I started standing up for myself against being mistreated, the higher ranks just came right back at me.
“They just had it in for me and they took every opportunity to undermine or humiliate me.”
After two tours in Lebanon with the UN, a tour of duty to Bosnia as a medic, and a career in which he represented the army in both shooting and other sports, he is proud of much of what he did.
But he still shudders when he thinks back over the way he was treated.
“I wanted to be the best soldier I could be,” he said.
“I threw myself into whatever I could do and was always one to go the extra mile to get something done. I was probably the most opposite to a malingerer.
“With competing in various military pentathlons, as well as handball, swimming and athletics championships, not to mention shooting tournaments.
"Being proficient with military weapons, equipment, and training during peacetime may be the very skills that could save lives in a real world event.
"A soldier may never need to use their skills, but you must be prepared. I was always trying to be the best soldier I could be.”
Alan is now the spokesperson for the Canary Movement, which represents more than 350 victims and survivors of abuse and mistreatment in the Defence Forces.
“I may have left the army, but I am still as determined as I have ever been to be part of something that changes the culture in there,” Alan says.
“It is so rooted in a Victorian era upstairs-downstairs class ethos that even the Brits got rid of it a long time ago because it just doesn't work.
“The Irish military establishment, which still lives in the old era that dates back to World War One when all they had to do was blow a whistle and soldiers would run into the face of certain death.
“They believe they are utterly above reproach but there are now so many of us gathering momentum for change.
“There is now on the horizon a coming day, when the military elite is going to have to turn to face the changes.”