John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Under our legislation, there is protection against pay reductions, suspensions, demotions and withholding of promotions as well as intimidation and harassment. A number of whistleblowers - it is not just one - in our system are still waiting to be dealt with. They would point to all of these headings and say that the entities with which they were dealing were in breach of all of them. They find it very difficult to get the protection that they first believed they had in legislation. Similar to the vulture funds, the reality in dealing with a protected disclosure is vastly different than what the dry print of legislation suggests. Some of these entities are agents of the State. It is shocking when one reads the disclosures. I do not want to go into it, but I gave the Minister a disclosure after our previous meeting.