Mr. Noel McGree:

I welcome the opportunity to appear before the committee today to offer my experience of the Protected Disclosures Act 2014. I refer to the famous quote, often repeated, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 was devised in Ireland to protect and advise citizens on how to do something to prevent the triumph of evil. Like all legislation, the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 is theory. As legislators, politicians see the world through the eyes of those who debate the issues of the day before devising theory or laws to address them. I view the world through different eyes. I see the practical impact and damage done by weak laws and even weaker regulation. The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 is not Government's best work. It is littered with half-finished aspirations and unqualified requests. It is actioned by weak and unenforceable guidelines, recommendations and framework documents which permit ambiguity and provide loopholes to those seeking to frustrate or abuse the intended purpose of the Act. Amendments to such a law will achieve little. I will give an example. If someone is assaulted in Ireland, the State represents the victim assaulted and those accused are prosecuted by the State through the Offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions. If a person is assaulted for being a whistleblower, penalised for making a protected disclosure, as defined by the Protected Disclosures Act, the State will finance the defence of those accused of corruption and penalisation through the Chief State Solicitor's Office. This explains why some politicians, in particular Ministers who are identified as recipients of protected disclosures under the Act, lack the courage required to support whistleblowers. The Ministers understand that such support means standing with David against Goliath, standing up to the vast State resources employed to defend those who breach the Protected Disclosures Act. This culture is anti-whistleblower. Our culture needs to change before the Act changes. In its current form, the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 does not deliver protection. It does not prevent corruption and waste and it does not provide savings for the State or ensure better efficiency of public spending. It serves only as a financial burden on the State as it incurs the huge expense of financing the defence of the corrupt and the assault of the whistleblower.

I refused to co-operate and assist in the stealing of public service resources. I reported this corruption, currently estimated at more than €21 million, as a protected disclosure. The State employed at least eight different independent external firms, funded from the public purse, to investigate, review, or challenge my reports. All energies and efforts

are focused on me, the discloser, while the corruption, the disclosure, is ignored and continues to this day. If I had embraced the corruption and assisted the theft of public funds, the State would have lost €21 million, and would have continued to lose, but I refused to steal and instead reported corruption as a protected disclosure. This has cost the State €21 million in corruption. That corruption continues to this day, with further millions of euro spent on firms to investigate and challenge reports upholding my concerns. I lost my career and my home. My family suffered. The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 does not deliver the function for which it was devised.

In March 2016, my concerns were defined as a protected disclosure. In February 2017, an independent report by a judge upheld my concerns and my complaints of penalisation. I received apologies and commendations from the Minister and the director general of my Department. In March 2018, I received an award from the Workplace Relations Commission which upheld my penalisation for making a protected disclosure, one of the less than 10% successful WRC cases to date. I have never received that award. In April 2019, with my circumstance escalating, I made a second protected disclosure highlighting my treatment and reporting serious organised corruption, which was passed to An Garda Síochána by the Minister, but my treatment was referred to line managers as a HR matter and in January 2020 I lost my career when the decision was taken to retire me 14 years early due to the penalisation that I was enduring for making protected disclosures.

The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 is theory. The reality is different. Real people in positions of authority mistreated me because they saw me as a threat to their criminal operations. They had been identified in the judge's report as penalising me for making protected disclosures, but the State protected them, not me. Their authority financed and empowered them to refuse acceptance of the judge's findings. These people remained my line managers and now viewed me as an even more dangerous threat to their criminal enterprise because the Protected Disclosures Act labelled me a credible whistleblower. The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 did not protect me; it defined me, identified me, labelled me and placed a target on my back. My penalisation escalated unabated and continues to this day. I should not be retired at 47 years of age. I should be working, providing public service, as I had done professionally for 25 years. Instead, I lost my job because I am not a thief. I lost my job because I reported corruption.

The Minister passed my protected disclosure to An Garda Síochána. When those involved in the criminal activity became aware that I had reported their criminal enterprise, my family and I came under sustained attack, intimidation and abuse. We were followed, assaulted and abused. Our home was attacked and damaged by men in balaclavas late

at night. Our car was vandalised and a dead rat was left at our front door. I reported these incidents to the Minister, complete with supporting CCTV footage, as the recipient of my protected disclosure. I described these events as serious penalisation for making protected disclosures, but also as a serious criminal offence under section 20 of the Criminal Justice Act 2011, which makes it a criminal act to penalise someone for reporting a crime. I received a written reply from a private legal firm, retained by the Minister’s Department and financed from public funds, to inform me that the harassment and intimidation of my family was no longer defined as a crime due to the amendment made to the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 by the Oireachtas, removing the definition of such intimidation and harassment as criminal when the initial criminal activity is reported as a protected disclosure. It could only be defined as penalisation, making the recipient of my protected disclosure, the Minister, responsible for my family's protection. The problem for my family is that the Minister refuses to engage with me because his departmental civil servants, the same line managers found to have penalised me in the judge's report, are in dispute with me because they refuse to accept the findings of the Department's own report upholding my earlier protected disclosure and penalisation.

On the day before Christmas Eve 2019, the Minister wrote to inform me that he was retiring me from my career due to my penalisation for making protected disclosures. He said that he knew my family had endured a tough time, but that he could not protect us because he was constrained by the Protected Disclosures Act 2014. When that Act permits a Minister to take away a whistleblower's career, while that same Minister is constrained from protecting the whistleblower, no one can boast that it is performing the function for which it was devised. The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 did not protect me, it even removed other protections that should have been available to me. It did not prevent the triumph of evil. I am not alone; I am just invisible. Every tactic is employed to ensure that whistleblowers like me remain invisible and silent. The reality is there are many people in Ireland who, like me, have been let down by the Protected Disclosures Act 2014. On 12 June 2020 , the Government published a commitment to ensure the effectiveness of new whistleblowing legislation in the context of the transposition of the EU directive on whistleblowing. The Programme for Government: Our Shared Futuredetails the Government's pledge to use the opportunity of the EU consideration of reforms to European-wide whistleblowing provisions to review, update and reform our whistleblowing legislation and ensure that it remains as effective as possible. It is time to deliver on that pledge.