Mr. Pat Keane:

The point on interim feedback is good. The Senator is correct. There will be situations where investigations of some complexity will last for a long time. It would be essential that people would receive more than just one feedback conversation beyond what is specified in the Act itself. We think that is something that would have to be dealt with more through the statutory guidance than through the law. One reason is the conditions that apply for making a public disclosure. The person has to have a reasonable belief, having had their initial feedback conversation after the three months, that nothing is being done about the report that has been made. If there is a provision in law whereby feedback conversation after feedback conversation can be rolled on, that makes it easier for the employer or person to string out the process and prevent the person from making a public disclosure. We feel that putting it into the Bill itself could be legally tricky for that reason and maybe contrary to what is required by the directive. It is something that could be elaborated on in guidance because we do agree with the principle. It is possible that after three months, one might have only started on the process on something incredibly complicated that requires multiple witnesses to be interviewed and thousands or millions of documents to be examined. Clearly there has to be a situation where the person is kept involved and informed along the way but it is in guidance rather than the law where that has to be provided for.

I agree with the point the Senator made on interpersonal grievances. It is common with most protected disclosures that a person does not simply report one thing. They report maybe five or six different things and they are often a mixture of personal grievances and protected disclosures. It is incumbent on the recipients who basically go through these and break them down into individual sub-reports and say of the six things reported that they would consider two to be personal grievances, which can be dealt with through our grievance procedure. The remaining four are purely protected disclosures and they would deal with them and those wrongdoings using the protected disclosures procedure. Again, it is something that can be elaborated on in the guidance rather than in legislation for the purpose of allowing for the right level of flexibility for people to operate and implement the legislation. We could also look at the wording of the definition of "follow-up" and what is meant in terms of what needs to be done in the initial assessment process when the disclosure is made. There are options that we can look at.

Does Ms Morgan want to come in on anything here?