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

I welcome commencement of consideration of the Bill on Committee Stage and I thank the committee and the Chairman for facilitating this. We had a very good discussion on Second Stage in the House and there is broad agreement on the Bill. A number of amendments have been put down by others with a view to improving the Bill and I also have a significant number of amendments. I have no doubt that we will have further changes on Report Stage in the Dáil.

In essence, the purpose of the Bill is to transpose the 2019 EU directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of EU law and provides for a set of minimum standards for the protection of whistleblowers across the Union. It amends Ireland's existing national whistleblower protection law, the Protected Disclosures Act 2014, to give effect to the provisions of the directive and it also goes beyond that. We are not just transposing the directive but we are providing for the establishment of an office of the protected disclosures commissioner in the Office of the Ombudsman. I look forward to a good discussion today on committee stage and, hopefully, we can make progress on the Bill.