The Defence Forces set up a board in 1990 to report on the role of women in the military, referred to among the military as the "Beauty Board". None of the 60 women soldiers interviewed for former Capt Clonan's research said they were asked their opinions by the board.
Although the Defence Forces Board on women in the military gave a "clear and explicit aspiration for equality of opportunity for female personnel" in 1990, Mr Clonan's report found that "as of June 2000, there is as yet no equality policy or deployment policy formulated to replace the 1990 policy".
The 1990 board recommended "the full integration of women in relation to access to the military career educational system and to promotional opportunity in the Defence Forces."
During his researches Mr Clonan found that women soldiers were deeply angry about being ordered to carry out menial tasks, often in canteens, particularly when they went to serve with the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
The Army cited "cultural" reasons among the local Shia Muslim population - who might object to the presence of women in uniform - as the reason for restricting the amount of operational duties by women soldiers.
When he started his researches in December 1996, there were 10 female privates serving at Battalion Headquarters in Lebanon. Three were serving as waitresses in the officers' mess; two were members of the pipe band; the others were switchboard operators.
Of one group of 17 women who had served overseas in Lebanon and were interviewed by Mr Clonan, six were waitresses in the officers' mess; five were switchboard operators; three were clerks; two were medical orderlies and another was a driver.
Interviewees rejected the Army's claim they could not serve operationally. One said: "The cultural argument we're given is just a convenient excuse for not putting in the infrastructure for women. What am I saying? I'm beginning to sound like them. "The infrastructure is there, it's just they don't want women. It's jobs for the boys. This is more to do with our own cultural problems than any aspect of Lebanese culture."
Another said: "The Irish Army is very backward on this. They train us as soldiers, then send us to the kitchen."
Another said: "We cannot serve in the hills. They say it's to do with the local culture. If they followed that to its logical conclusion, then you'd only have Arabs going to the Leb."
Another said the anti-women culture in the Army was worse than that experienced outside the Irish camp among the Shia women. "The Arabs don't have a problem with the women. It's the Army itself that has a problem with women. The Arabs I met didn't give a damn that it was a woman cleaning their wounds."
Only one of the 60 women interviewed expressed misgivings about local culture with regard to women's service. She said: "I don't know if I'd trust the Arab men on a checkpoint. If the Army wanted to put a woman on the checkpoint, I wouldn't like to be the experiment."
Others strongly disagreed: "There were many women, however, who were happy to share the dangers of checkpoint duty with their male colleagues." Another said: "I'd do the checkpoint if I got the chance. I'd prefer it to the officers' mess."
Mr Clonan pointed out that other nations' military serving with the UN in south Lebanon regularly sent women on operational duties. These included the Finnish Battalion, Norwegian Battalion and Polish Battalion, which serve alongside the Irish Battalion.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces in former Yugoslavia, where Mr Clonan also served, deploy women in operational roles.