Eight members of the Defence Forces were either under investigation or appeared before the courts accused of sexual offences last year.
Another six faced accusations of sexual assault within the military in 2025.
In the wake of the allegations raised by the Women of Honour group, the Defence Forces has been compiling and sharing data on the number of members who have been accused of offences including bullying, harassment, assault and sexual violence.
The data was shared with an external oversight body, which the Government had set up to help change the culture within the Defence Forces. An anonymised version of the data was shared with The Irish Times, under Freedom of Information.
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According to the anonymous statistics, at one point last year there were 45 different members of the Defence Forces who were either appearing before the civil courts or under investigation by An Garda Síochána for a range of offences. One person was charged with two offences.
The Defence Forces collected a rolling total of members who were under investigation or before the courts for each quarter of the year. In the second quarter of 2025, a total of eight members of the Defence Forces were facing allegations of sexual offences. In the same quarter of the year, another six people were facing allegations of what were described as “domestic incidents”.
There were 20 people facing investigations or prosecutions for assault in the first quarter of 2025.
Road traffic, public order and drugs offences were also included for smaller numbers of Defence Forces members. One person was accused of non-payment of a loan, while another faced an accusation of possessing an inappropriate image.
The Defence Forces also collected data on the number of members who had been the subject of internal complaints, Military Police investigations and referrals to An Garda Síochána. By the end of 2025, 47 people had been the subject of 53 such complaints. The Defence Forces said a number of investigations involved more than one service member, and “two investigations involve the same service member”.
These 53 investigations included 21 allegations of physical assault and 22 allegations of “inappropriate behaviour” and one allegation of bullying, by the year’s end. The Defence Forces said “inappropriate behaviour” included allegations of bullying and harassment. At the start of 2025, there were six people subject to such allegations for sexual assault. By the end of the year, the figure was four.
The 47 people facing internal complaints, Military Police investigations and referrals to An Garda Síochána by the end of 2025 was a slight increase from the 39 people facing the same kinds of investigations at the end of 2024. Those 39 investigations included 17 for physical assault, seven for sexual assault and 15 for “inappropriate behaviour”.
There were 37 Defence Forces cases before the civil courts or under investigation by An Garda Síochána in the third quarter of 2024, the first time such data was collated. The figure was down to 30 in the final quarter of 2024.
A spokesman for the Department of Defence said Minister for Defence Helen McEntee “condemns all forms of inappropriate behaviour”.
“The Minister receives briefings from the Defence Forces Chief of Staff on all live cases in both the civil and military justice systems and the action taken. The Minister does not comment on individual cases,” the spokesman said.
The establishment of an external oversight body was one of the recommendations of the Independent Review Group in 2023, which was tasked with examining allegations of abuse, harassment and misogyny within the Defence Forces.
The allegations were first raised by a group of female veterans which became known as the Women of Honour. The oversight board is intended to drive cultural change in the Defence Forces and increase transparency and accountability.
