Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Watt might send us a note on that. It is important that Mr. Watt listens to what I say next. The Department now has to do the same for protected disclosures. I have yet to meet a single body that knows how to deal with a protected disclosure. Members of this committee are being inundated and I have yet to see a public body that has dealt satisfactorily with protected disclosure. It is no good Mr. Watt saying that the Department has sent the circulars. The Department needs to do what it did with FOI. That is why I teased out that question.

We deal with third level institutions and the Garda Síochána and almost every week people tell us about protected disclosures because people are utterly dissatisfied. There are commissions of investigation into Sergeant McCabe's protected disclosure, and a social worker in the south east had to make a protected disclosure about Grace, who was placed in foster care by the HSE. The system could not cope with that protected disclosure. There have been others in the Irish Prison Service and the Garda Síochána.

For the third time I say I have to yet see a State body handling a protected disclosure adequately. I note we probably only see the ones that did not work out. There is ineptitude. I have seen protected disclosures go to mediation, retired judges doing the adjudication and the public body three months later goes into the Labour Relations Commission and disowns the mediation report. That was a case in the Irish Prison Service. Mr. Watt might have been aware of that. We are utterly at a loss and frustrated at the lack of ability in the public service to deal with these. Whoever did the FOI training needs to bring that thinking to the protected disclosure and must move to that next.