Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will pick up on a few areas, one of which has been mentioned already. I hear that the witnesses have heard there are concerns around the personal grievance space and interpersonal piece. The concern is not just that somebody can still make a protected disclosure, but it is around how it might be interpreted. It might be useful to have a clarification on this. For example, somebody may have an interpersonal grievance, which may indeed be valid, and the person may be pursuing one channel on this, but that does not preclude the person from also making a protected disclosure in relation to a systemic issue or other wider issue. It might be useful for this to be clear in the legislation. Very often, people are used to a hierarchy of reporting or the hierarchy of engagement, whereby the issue is already being dealt with through one route, the person has chosen path A and, therefore, cannot choose path B. It needs to be very clear to people that the other routes are open to them, including making a report to prescribed persons. We cannot rely on those who become whistleblowers to know this. They are not necessarily starting out as legal experts and it is a very frightening thing for somebody to make that decision. They need to be confident in it, and such clarity would signal that.

As highlighted by some of the witnesses and identified here, there were issues in the past around the complaint or concern going back to those who were being complained about or being whistleblown about. I understand there are some are some attempts to address this in the legislation but there is still a bit of vulnerability there in assessing the space around the validity of this as a protected disclosure.

I have another concern about accountability. It is about the balance whereby we want to ensure that we can protect people, but we also want to make sure that we do not simply have this sitting in a separate space, and that there is a level of accountability, consequence and change within the organisation, the public body or the entity about whom the whistle is being blown. This is particularly concerning with regard to the ministerial part. There have been past concerns about ambiguity. For example, if a person makes a protected disclosure to the Minister for Transport - to take one example, which is not the example I am thinking of - is the disclosure to the individual as a prescribed person or is it to the role of the Minister? There has been an ambiguity around this in the past. I am interested that this is phrased in the Bill as support to the Minister. How do we ensure that such support does not end up effectively diminishing the political accountability piece of this or that Ministers end up getting cut out of the picture?

In the past, many issues and wrongdoings were framed as administrative errors or matters but there is a danger of the issue moving far away from persons who can be held accountable and being seen as separate to them. That is also true of people who can execute cultural change.

I am also concerned about a more ambitious role for the office around protected disclosures. It is very much framed as the data comes in and it is there to deal with individual wrongdoings but I am thinking of identifying patterns. I am thinking of one submission, from Raiseaconcern.com. One question that needs to be asked is why these issues were not identified previously. If a similar type of financial abuse or other abuse occurred in three or four public bodies, they would be placed alongside each other. One of the big failures of the previous legislation was reporting. How can there be more robust reporting and how can the office playing a role in identifying the patterns from reporting? It would be a case whereby the data would not be stored in an inappropriate way but that it would, at least, contribute to identifying patterns of bad practice or poor practice.

I am using the word "retrospective" but I do not believe that it is retrospective; it is more accurately ongoing, that is, continuing cases. There have been cases where people have made a protected disclosure, which may well predate this legislation, and a resolution has still not happened. They may not have received communication on what the consequences of those actions were and, in most cases, they have not been able to access the compensation payment, sometimes because the paperwork for that compensation payment is going through the body that they are whistleblowing about or it gets tied up there. For cases where the disclosure may be in the past but other parts of the process remain unresolved, will the whistleblowers be able to access the rights in terms of communication and compensation that are provided by this legislation?They should to build confidence in whistleblowing.

On communication, I recognise there is the feedback after six months and then there is the final outcome, but there can be five years between those sometimes. I believe this should be strengthened so that a person who has made a disclosure, who may be working in fear or concern, not knowing what those on whom they have blown the whistle know about them, may be able to get feedback or an update on where the process is at, so that there is an in-between right to communication and information.