Mr. Pat Keane:

I will set out some of the thinking behind this. The purpose of the Protected Disclosures Act, as it says in its Long Title, is to protect persons making "certain disclosures in the public interest". Similarly, the directive states its purpose is to provide for: "... the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law ... [...] ... that are harmful to the public interest ...". While neither piece of legislation has a formal public interest test it is clear matters such as private interest, such as personal grievances, lie outside the scope of this legislation in general. That is not to say personal grievances are not important but we must recognise such matters are to a large extent already protected by the very significant corpus of employment law, much of which existed for many decades before the Protected Disclosures Act.

It was never the intention of the Protected Disclosures Act that it should become an alternative avenue for the airing of personal grievances but in practice we have seen there have been some problems in this area. There is a small but not insignificant number of cases that appear before the WRC that have tried to introduce protected disclosures into matters that are solely personal grievances. Similarly, a small but not insignificant number of employers have raised concerns with us that some personal grievances that have already concluded formal internal grievance processes have been raised again by employees as protected disclosures. In all these cases this has led to a certain amount of wasted time and effort on matters that should be outside of this legislation so we feel the legislation needs to make more clear this distinction between personal grievances and other forms of wrongdoing. We noted a number of the other witnesses who appeared before the committee in earlier hearings have welcomed efforts in this area, although they did have a couple of notes of caution about it. In that regard, we recognise there are situations where the line between a protected disclosure and a personal grievance can be blurred. The wording of this provision is really important so it is not interpreted too widely. In this regard, the wording we currently have is that matters "... concerning interpersonal grievances exclusively affecting the reporting person ..." will not be considered protected disclosures. That would mean an isolated incident of bullying, perhaps, between a manager and an employee would be a private interest and would not be a protected disclosure. It would be dealt with under employment law or under whatever internal grievance process exists within the organisation. However, where there is a situation where there is a report or a series of reports that suggest a wider culture of workplace bullying, those certainly would be protected disclosures.

We recognise getting the wording of this right is going to be very important so we are open to suggestions from the committee and anybody else about wording that will ensure the correct application of this provision in practice.