Dr. Lauren Kierans:

In response to the Deputy's question on channels of disclosure, this is something I assessed by looking at the case law under the Protected Disclosures Act for a six-year period between 15 July 2014 and 15 July 2020. I discovered that in 85.6% of the cases the worker had gone internally with the disclosure in the first instance. There was only one case in which the worker had gone externally in the first instance to make the disclosure. However, in 22% of the cases where the worker had gone internally, the worker subsequently went externally because he or she was dissatisfied with the response or there was no response whatsoever. The legislation allows for that. It allows for alternative disclosure recipients. Under the EU directive in particular, we will see the extension of an obligation. All public bodies are currently obliged to have whistleblowing procedures in place to deal with disclosures from their employees but this will be extended to the private sector for organisations that have more than 50 employees. Further, there will be no threshold if the organisation is in the area of financial services, preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, national transport or the environment. Essentially, this means workers mostly go internally but if the disclosure is not handled correctly, they go externally. It is to be hoped that the new obligations under the EU directive will enhance the responses internally to workers' disclosures, meaning they will not have to go outside the organisation with the disclosure.