Oliver Mullaney<\/a> gave another soldier a lift home.<\/p>\n\u200bHe said \u200bM\u200br Mullaney \u200b\u2014 who had allegedly been subjected to a prolonged period of humiliation by an officer known in the tribunal as 2LTB \u2014 turned to the soldier and asked him the question about how 52 lads could be \u201cso wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge asked him to repeat this and asked what this meant.<\/p>\n
Mr McGrath said: \u201cWe were always in the wrong, no matter what happened.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier, he had given evidence about “numerous” incidents where recruits were allegedly physically attacked or berated and humiliated by \u200b2LTB.<\/p>\n
He \u200balso confirmed details about incidents \u200bpreviously referenced in the tribunal\u200b involving the officer, who cannot be named for legal reasons.<\/p>\n
These included the \u201cdeliberate\u201d targeting of fellow recruit Damien Traynor, who eventually suffered a serious nervous breakdown as a result of the way he was treated\u200b, and Mr Mullaney\u2019s \u200ballegedly being repeatedly shouted and screamed at \u200band ordered to sing and then kiss other recruits by 2LTB\u200b.<\/p>\n
\u200bO\u200bther incidents allegedly include him kicking recruits in the ribs while they did press ups, forcibly cutting their hair if he didn\u2019t feel it was short enough, and routinely confining recruits \u2014 many of whom were as young as 16 at the time \u2014 to the barracks, and stopping them from going home to their parents.<\/p>\n
The officer\u2019s legal team have repeatedly told former recruits giving testimony he “vehemently” \u200bd\u200benies every single allegation against him.<\/p>\n
Martin Wall, another recruit at the Apprentice School who joined when he was just 16\u200b and a former platoon leader, \u200bt\u200bold the tribunal that after Mr Mullaney’s death, the army no longer trusted the recruits with live weapons.<\/p>\n
He told the tribunal there was a fear there would be a repeat of what Mr Mullaney had done.<\/p>\n
He said while the barracks “was still armed at the time”, and some soldiers had access to army rifles and “60 rounds of ammunition”, the rest of the recruits were given wooden batons.<\/p>\n
\u200bWhen asked if he ever complained, and if he didn\u2019t \u2014 why he did not\u200b, Mr McGrath\u200b said \u201cnever once\u201d was he shown how to make a complaint in the 10 years he served in the Defence Forces.<\/p>\n
He also said it was explained to him shortly after he joined the army as a 16-year-old that it was considered an act of \u201cmutiny\u201d if two or more soldiers were found to be criticising the army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These were the last words spoken by a teenage army recruit \u200bordered by an officer to sing nursery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13308,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-520029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-defence-forces","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}