Responsibility for the Army deafness claims rested firmly with the military establishment, Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist Party, Dublin West) claimed.

In the past, protecting their hearing seemed to be the only matter left to the discretion of soldiers, he said. Everything else, from the time they got up in the morning to the type of uniform they wore, was decided for them. He was speaking during the resumed debate on the Civil Liability (Assessment of Hearing Injury) Bill 1998, which passed all stages.

It requires the courts to take into account the disability assessment formula contained in the report of an independent expert group set up last August by the Government.

Mr Higgins said the pay rates of soldiers had been a scandal, adding that the spouses of soldiers had contested general elections in the 1980s to highlight the issue. "The reality is that the rank-and-file soldiers were treated like second-class citizens and the Army had an extremely entrenched class system. "There were the cadets and the officers at the top and the rank-and-file soldiers were simply fodder for them. That was the entire military ethos."

Mr Sean Power (FF, Kildare) said Mr Higgins was being a "Mr Hindsight" in trying to allocate blame. A system was now being put in place whereby people would be properly compensated and an end put to the unnecessary expense involved up to now. The Fine Gael spokeswoman on defence, Ms Frances Fitzgerald, said it was quite reasonable for Mr Higgins to ask whose fault it was.

Asked by the Labour spokesman on justice, Dr Pat Upton, to give details of the number of barristers he had retained in Army deafness cases, the Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, in a written reply, said the Attorney General had established a panel. Because of the need to have a cut-off point, there had been a turnover, with 53 barristers on the list at the end of April.