Mr. John Devitt:

I am happy to come in here and I am sure my colleagues will be happy to contribute as well. We advise employers to ensure they have policies, systems and procedures in place, not just to investigate but to assess or screen a concern or potential protected disclosure when it is made. In doing so, they can determine its credibility and whether, in the first instance, it is a protected disclosure as defined in the Act or whether it should be handled through grievance procedures. As my colleague Ms Heffernan might have said earlier, provision should be made in the revised Act to distinguish between interpersonal grievances and protected disclosures. Employers will need to be offered guidance and training on how to sift the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, to distinguish between the two.

Ultimately, it is up to a court to determine whether a disclosure was a protected disclosure but we want to avoid, insofar as possible, cases reaching the courts because if they do, both the employer and the employee, and more often the employee, will have lost a great deal in taking a legal challenge. It is important, therefore, that employers have these systems in place. That is one reason we suggest the obligation to have policies and procedures under the revised Act should be extended to employers of all sizes and sectors. Ms Casey might have spoken about services we provide through the Integrity of Work programme to public bodies and members of the initiative. There is no easy answer to this. Rather, we suggest that all employers should seek to have policies and procedures and that they should be adequately resourced, in terms of both time and finances.