Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 5, between lines 23 and 24, to insert the following:“3. The Ombudsman shall, not later than 12 months after the enactment of this Act and each year thereafter, carry out a review of the protected disclosure process following which he or she shall, issue a report to the Minister on the said process as to whether or not the process is found to be operating in a consistent manner across all bodies which come within the remit of the Act and if reasonable practices have been established by such bodies.”.

The essence of my amendment is that the protected disclosure process will be available across all employment, be it in the public or private sectors. There is a perception that once legislation has been enacted the job of the Oireachtas is done, but if we have learned anything from the experience of recent years, it is that the people who have been entrusted to do a job do not always do it. It is not the job of the Oireachtas to micromanage these issues. Sometimes we put regulators in place but the question is asked regularly "Who regulates the regulators?".
We will have procedures in place for protected disclosure right across the entire country. To instill public confidence in the system of protected disclosure it is reasonable that people would believe there is a consistent approach. If one makes a complaint to the local authority in Kerry or makes a complaint against the Department of Justice and Equality, there should be similar type protections, not just specified in law but being interpreted and implemented. It is similar to the point we addressed when we discussed the freedom of information legislation. There is training for people across the public service to ensure there is a consistent approach to all these matter.
In my amendment I call for a procedure whereby a year after the enactment of the legislation, the Ombudsman, or a designated person, if the Minister considers that somebody other than the Ombudsman should do it, should carry out a review of the protected disclosure process, following which the Ombudsman or other person shall report to the Minister on whether the said process is operating in a consistent manner across all bodies which come within the remit of the Act.
To repeat, we often hear that new rules and regulations are not implemented because the body does not have the resources to do so. It is fine to have the legislation, but we need to know it will be applied in a consistent manner in every organisation to which it applies. To ensure that the legislation is working, we must conduct an annual review. I ask the Minister to accept the principle of the need for a review to ensure the legislation is working in practice. The Minister will probably tell us several times that this new legislation has groundbreaking procedures and is a major reform. That counts for nothing unless it is applied on the ground after the legislation has been passed.