Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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Gabhaim míle buíochas leis an bhfinné as an gcur i láthair sin. Bhí sé an-suimiúil agus forleathan. Táimid an-bhuíoch as sin. There is a great number of good, hardworking people in the National Museum of Ireland and we applaud them for the work they have done over the past number of years. Much good work is being done in the development of exhibitions and making those exhibitions accessible to the citizens of the country. Ms Heaney is correct that there are two sides to every experience. Where there are human resources, there are human resources issues. That is the nature of it. The reason the committee has sought to focus on the issue and, if one likes, shine a light on it is to help Ms Heaney's team, hopefully, to draw a line under what has been experienced and motivate the Department to take an added interest in reforming the situations.

By way of background, I have received information with regard to the situation in the National Museum of Ireland in recent years. In 2011, a firm of psychotherapists and psychologists was employed by the National Museum of Ireland to deal with the issues of low morale and bullying within the National Museum of Ireland. Subsequently, they sent a letter to the Minister. The letter stated that they, in their relatively long experience of providing staff care employee assistance programmes to many different types of organisations, had never previously encountered what appeared from their perspective to be a prolonged, systemic and institutionalised bullying of the general staff by some senior members of the administrative staff. I understand the trade unions, which have also been involved in working with the staff, have stated the same. They felt the experience of staff in that scenario has been an outlier.

I have gone through some of the different costs incurred by the National Museum of Ireland over the years and I estimate that €1.5 million to €1.8 million has been spent on consultants' reports, agencies or legal settlements of some sort to deal with the issue. There has also been a number of investigations and reports. The Labour Relations Commission was involved in one report in 2013. Its report stated that 88% of staff viewed morale in the museum to be poor; that staff had stated that there was a negative industrial relations culture typified by mutual mistrust, adversarialism and poor communications and consultation; that there was a poor dialogue between senior management and staff, a poor history of individual conflict resolution and poor team spirit; and that there was an acknowledgement by management of a poor industrial relations culture, etc.

In 2016, a Work Positive Profile report, which I obtained under the freedom of information regime, was commissioned and published. The report appears to echo the findings of the Labour Relations Commission's report in 2013. It stated 20% of employees reported that they were often or always subject to bullying while a further 20% stated they were sometimes victims of bullying. Cumulatively, that is 40% of staff within the National Museum of Ireland. More than 40% of employees were deemed to be at risk of developing anxiety or depression and almost 70% of respondents felt that employee morale was poor to very poor, with poor communication and a lack of trust of employees. Seven in ten employees wanted mental health support to deal with stress and depression. Staff contentedness in the National Museum of Ireland was deemed to be at the bottom fifth of that of Irish companies.

Further, I understand that at least three cases have been brought to the High Court with regard to alleged bullying. I know the witnesses will not be able to speak to any of those cases in particular, nor do I wish to speak to them except to give that reflection about the experience. I believe other particular staff issues have gone to the High Court that do not relate purely to allegations of bullying.

These are typically men and women who have strong characters and work hard in the profession they love. When speaking to them, these individuals told me they have had shattered lives and experienced emotional collapse and major stress. Some attribute other illnesses, etc., in their lives to this although that cannot be proven in any way at all.

I am told one of the key problems over the years is that typically the first thing people are asked to do when they bring complaints is to redefine those complaints as non-complaints. A process would then happen to deal with it. If they did not, they were pressurised to withdraw complaints. If that did not happen, the National Museum of Ireland would often then have a strong team of solicitors and be quick and ready to build a legal and financial wall around these complaints to ensure that they did not proceed any further. I was even told - perhaps Mr. Ó Floinn will be able to answer it - that someone who had a major difficulty with the National Museum of Ireland and had left it and was in a new place of employment was hand-delivered a letter by a member of the senior management of the National Museum of Ireland in that new place of work. Perhaps that could be addressed later.

There is also the issue of protected disclosures. I had a discussion with the Minister about this over the past number of months. It is a disputed, at best, one could say, protected disclosure. Has the National Museum of Ireland received a complaint which had "This is a protected disclosure" as a sentence within its first paragraph? Has the museum dealt with the contents of the protected disclosure? Was the disputed protected disclosure given to the individual who was the subject of these complaints as well? Perhaps those questions could be addressed first.