Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. We have kept the European Commission informed of the progress of this Bill right the way through. As she knows, we sent the general scheme and heads of Bill to the committee and it conducted pre-legislative scrutiny. That took longer than I would have liked. I think it took about seven months. The transposition deadline for that Bill was in mid-December, so we have missed it but, as I said, we have kept the Commission informed all the way through. As things stand Ireland is one of a relatively small number of countries that have an established protected disclosures regime. We will be adding to, strengthening and improving that through the new Bill. The new Bill has now been approved by Government. It will be published in the coming days and I look forward to engaging with the Deputy, her colleagues and all Oireachtas Members in detail on the progression of that Bill. I have carefully studied the recommendations from the committee. Some of them we have directly taken on board and others we will consider on Committee Stage. There may be some we cannot accommodate but that is an issue for the Oireachtas in the course of the progression of the Bill. That includes her questions on the number of staff, the budget and so on. Those are detailed operational issues we will come to in the course of considering the Bill. I hope Second Stage of that Bill can start within the next couple of weeks or so. I look forward to it.