Mr. Séamus Clarke:

We do not really have a view as to whether the scope of the legislation should cover other areas such as journalists. However, I will make the point that, as things stand, workers are protected under the protected disclosure regime currently in place. Because the new changes will expand that to situations that are not traditionally associated with workers - shareholders, members of a board and potential employees who are merely job applicants - the general scheme attempts to deal with the directive as the directive is, so it deals with the new areas that are set out in the directive. There is nothing stopping a legislature going further than the directive because the directive simply sets out the goals of the European Union legislation. There is nothing stopping the Legislature from using the opportunity it now has before it to expand the various types of persons it wants covered in a protected disclosure regime. I noted in the contribution made by the ICCL that it has given an example of somebody who might be in the health service as a patient and who might have a disclosure they want to make. The benefits of having a definition of a reporting person which includes within its enumeration a worker mean that the Legislature can now, or even at a future date, easily include other persons it wants to enjoy the protections of protected disclosure. Therefore, we think it is just more sensible from a drafting perspective to have a cleaner version called "reporting person" and to include in it a worker and other persons, as in the directive, which effectively involves three other persons, and then the Legislature can decide if it wants to expand that further now or at any future date.