Ms Lorraine Heffernan:

On the question about greater security for whistleblowers, the answer lies in providing training for the disclosure recipients and a greater awareness of the rights of both the discloser and the persons of concern. When somebody makes a disclosure of wrongdoing in the workplace, it can be hard to hear that from an employer's perspective, and everyone feels under threat. If you treat the situation whereby everyone knows he or she is taken care of and that both the whistleblower and those who are implicated are going to be protected, that would enhance how things play out in the workplace and, it is hoped, would create a more secure environment for everybody.

With regard to a wider application, if you had a disclosure made to you and you wanted to carry out an audit of your systems, that will depend on the diligence of an employer. I have experience of that, where a discloser fed into a bigger process for strengthening financial controls inside the system. That happens and that is where you see the system working properly - somebody discloses something, it is taken on board and addressed.

With regard to procurement, that arose twice in the Senator's questions. One aspect of the Protected Disclosures Act that the whistleblower directive seeks to address is the area of penalties. The heads of the Bill are silent as to what penalties are envisaged under this new amendment, but if there are issues with procurement, it might be necessary to look at the penalties. It might be an area where sanctions are necessary to encourage it to work properly.