Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

I will take part of the response before asking Ms McCaffrey to add to what I say. My notes indicate that the policy started in July 2015, but either way there was a slight delay after the 2014 policy was introduced. That reflects the fact that all public sector organisations took a while to catch up with the protected disclosure provisions.

The protected disclosure process in the Prison Service has changed, and I will ask Ms McCaffrey to elaborate on that. It has also changed within the Department. With the benefit of experience, and recognising, in particular, the need to be as independent as possible and to be seen to be so, and partly because of the unpredictable workload from protected disclosures - which has not been such a great deal but it has been unpredictable - we have decided to outsource all assessment and investigation, as I said earlier. The OGP has put in place a panel from which we can draw in that regard, which we are now using for all the cases.

Until July 2018, the director of the internal audit at the Department was the recipient for protected disclosures, not only in the Department but also in the Prison Service. Since then, the Prison Service has put in place its own recipient and, therefore, its own process. Some protected disclosures, even in the Prison Service, continue to be sent to the Department because some people address protected disclosures to Ministers and we must deal with that. When that happens, we generally refer them to the Prison Service unless there is some sort of conflict, for example, with senior officers.