Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

The Government motion seeks the discharge of an earlier order of the Dáil for the consideration of the Whistleblowers Protection Bill 1999 in committee of the whole Dáil and it seeks to direct that the Bill be withdrawn. The motion is shameful but not unexpected. In fact, like every other aspect of the Government's approach to this affair, its timing is dilatory, tortuous and drawn out.

The timetable, as a whole, stretches over more than six and a half years, as traced by the Minister of State, Deputy Killeen. On 15 June 1999, the then Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Kitt, gave the official Government line on my Bill. He said, "I fully support any meaningful measures to increase the protection of workers and, therefore, I will not oppose the reference of this Bill to a committee" and added, "Good employers, however, who respect the practice of information and consultation with their workers need have no fear from the implementation of the measures envisaged in the Bill". Deputy Kitt concluded by stating:

As regards future actions, it would be useful if I and my officials could maintain regular contact with Deputy Rabbitte with a view to co-operating to ensure that the resultant Bill contains the best legislative proposals that can be put in place to protect persons from retaliation by their employers for reporting dubious practices to the appropriate authorities.

I confirm to the House what I stated previously, namely, that Deputy Kitt's words were meaningless and empty. Neither he, his then senior Minister — the Tánaiste, Deputy Harney — their successors nor any of their officials maintained any sort of contact with me, regular or otherwise, in respect of this Bill from that day to this.

The then Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Cullen, concluded the debate by saying, "The Government is committed to the maximum co-operation on this Bill to ensure we have the best possible legislation on this important issue". The Bill was immediately sent to the Select Committee on Enterprise and Small Business but the proceedings thereof were delayed to give the Tánaiste time to consider the Bill in detail and to propose any necessary amendments. This was understandable and we waited in patience for the results of her deliberations.

In the interim, various bodies, including among others the Irish Nurses Organisation, the Irish Bank Officials Association and the Irish Airline Pilots Association, called for comprehensive statutory protection for whistleblowers. Those calls increased dramatically in the aftermath of the publication of the Lourdes Hospital inquiry report. In addition, the Standards in Public Office Commission recommended that a whistleblowers' charter be introduced for local government employees. Various Ministers and the Taoiseach continued to give the impression that work was ongoing to strengthen and improve the Bill.

In March 2000, the then Minister for Finance told the Dáil, in a statement on the Committee of Public Accounts report on the DIRT inquiry, that a scheme and procedure for bank officials to report suspected wrongdoing would be introduced by way of amendments to the Whistleblowers Protection Bill.

In December 2000, the Taoiseach, in an article in The Irish Times setting out his Government's proposals for a package of measures to combat corruption, wrote:

I am announcing a set of proposals which meet the need for modernisation and transparency, while at the same time allowing for the continuing development of a fully inclusive and dynamic body politic. These proposals include the introduction of legislation to protect whistleblowers.

In the following sentence, however, he also announced the introduction of legislation to regulate lobbyists. We are still awaiting any action from the Government on that issue, even though my colleague, Deputy Quinn, introduced a Bill on the matter in July of 1999.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment stated repeatedly that extensive amendments were being prepared, based on consultations with all Departments. To the best of my knowledge, this evening is the first time we have heard about the 45 amendments that were prepared. It implies that the Bill entirely passed muster with the Department, which set out to make the legislation more comprehensive by framing the 45 amendments to which the Minister of State referred. Presumably the change of heart is entirely due to a change of political will on the part of the Government to proceed with the Bill. I do not accept all of the talk about the complexity of the advice from the Attorney General. The Bill and the amendments clearly went through the Parliamentary Counsel and might have been enacted if the political will to do so had been in existence.

Although the Bill lapsed on the dissolution of the 28th Dáil, it was restored to the Order Paper by the Government following the general election. The Bill also had supporters in the high level group on regulation and on the Government back benches. As recently as last June, Deputy Fleming produced a report from the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service on commercial bank charges and interest rates, stating that those engaged in whistleblowing should receive statutory protection and recommending that the Bill should be progressed.

The truth is that the Taoiseach and Tánaiste systematically misled the Dáil regarding the reasons the Government has blocked further progress on the Bill. When it became obvious that progress was being blocked, I continually questioned the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance on the Order of Business. I was told by each that significant legal and constitutional issues had arisen and, eventually, that the legal advice was that the Government should not proceed with the Bill.

Under pressure from me in June of last year, the sixth anniversary of the passing of Second Stage, the Tánaiste informed me she would ask the line Minister to furnish me with the legal advice. When I still had not received the promised legal advice, I again raised the matter with the Tánaiste and she was forced to admit there was no such advice.

She said it was not actually the Attorney General's advice but official advice on the difficulties that would arise if the whistleblowing legislation applied to companies outside Ireland with a subsidiary in Ireland. I see no mention of that in the list of complexities that are bewildering the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Killeen.

We know the Dáil has been systematically misled by the most senior members of the Government. The real reason the Government reversed engines and decided not to proceed with important legislation which it supported on Second Stage is that it was afraid it might offend the multinationals. The multinational companies have extensive practical experience of dealing with whistleblower legislation in many countries in the western world. From this, they learned to live quite comfortably with it. If they can persuade the Government to impose much poorer standards of corporate governance than they are used to elsewhere, they would be foolish not to throw their weight around.

The purpose of my Bill was to challenge and help transform the traditional culture of secrecy surrounding the conduct of business and public affairs. From the Blood Transfusion Service to the beef industry, whether it is Army deafness or Dublin planning or, more recently and most devastatingly, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital's maternity wing, the questions are the same. Did nobody know or suspect? Is it credible that nobody in the system ever stumbled across wrongdoing? Why was nothing reported earlier?

As regards illegality and malpractice in our financial institutions, did nobody in these institutions know what was going on? In answer to these questions most right-thinking people will believe people knew or had their suspicions. However, the consequences for whistleblowers, in their careers and livelihoods, are such that it is often easier to turn a blind eye.

My Bill proposed a set of new statutory rights for employees, whether in the public or the private sector, to report and transmit information they receive of illegality or malpractice discovered in the course of their employment. I believe this is an essential step to restoring confidence in our major institutions, whether industrial, financial or governmental.

Under my Bill, any employee who blows the whistle on fraud or malpractice will be entitled to protection against dismissal or any other sanction which his or her employer attempts to impose. These rights are essential if we are serious about ending the nod and wink culture that permeates certain sectors of business and public life. Events of recent years have demonstrated the current legal position actively discourages individuals from reporting what they believe to be serious offences or major failings on the part of their employers, many of which have public interest implications.

There is an obligation on the State to ensure individuals who provide such information are not victimised or discriminated against in the wake of their disclosures. This is an employment protection and public interest Bill, designed to secure rights for any worker, whether on a FÁS course, working in a hospital, a blood bank, a shopping store, a beef factory, a financial institution or a Department to refuse to be complicit with improper decisions taken by his or her management superiors.

There is genuine concern at the failure of our regulatory institutions, such as the Revenue Commissioners and the Central Bank, to crack down on glaring abuses of the system. I share the concern but the Government does not. The Bill is firmly in line with the Labour Party's ongoing commitment to openness, transparency and accountability. That commitment produced the Freedom of Information Act, the Ethics in Public Office Act and the reforms to our Electoral Acts governing disclosure of donations and expenses at elections and capping expenditure at all elections. However, due to the legislative back-pedalling of the then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Noel Dempsey, it does not apply to local elections.

The evidence of its years in office has persuaded me the Government fears the concepts of openness, transparency and accountability almost as much as it despises them. It knows it must pay lip-service but its impulse is to renege, to side-step, to prevaricate and to dissemble.

Developments may take place in other countries and reforms may sweep through the most hidebound and bloated of international institutions. Yet the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil see no need to change the way we do business. This is despite the bleatings of the Progressive Democrats when they were on this side of the House.

Ominously, on the day I introduced the Bill, the then Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Cullen, compared the Whistleblowers Protection Bill in importance to the Freedom of Information Act, which he described as "the most far-reaching legislation as regards dealing with the public sector" and which "marked an important first step towards a new era of openness in Government and in public affairs". He described my Bill as contributing further to the culture of openness and transparency.

We know what the Government did to the Freedom of Information Act, once it got tired of its temporary little commitment to openness, transparency and accountability. The Freedom of Information Act was introduced by the rainbow Government to ensure greater openness and to guarantee access to information to which the public is entitled. Fianna Fáil was always unhappy with this approach and it wasted little time in introducing legislation designed to undermine the original Act.

Despite having no mandate to do so and never having raised the matter in either party's election manifesto, the Government introduced amending legislation in 2003 which excluded whole areas of information to which the public had been entitled under the original Act. It then followed this with massive increases in charges for applications under the Act. The whole impact of this has been to seriously undermine the value of the original legislation.

It now seems clear that accepting the Whistleblowers Protection Bill on Second Stage was preferable to the embarrassment of voting it down. There was never any intention of implementing it. Better simply to put on an outward show of agreement and then send the issue to a departmental committee where it would die of old age. Although the 1999 Bill probably holds some form of parliamentary record as the longest standing Bill on the Dáil's Order Paper, it will take a change of Government to see it passed into law.

We are ready for that eventuality. One way or the other, the Bill will pass into law. The Labour Party, when in Government, is committed to restoring and enacting the Whistleblowers Protection Bill. We are also committed to a return to the highest possible standards in regard to access to official information. We will repeal the Government's wrecking amendments to that legislation and restore and improve upon the original Freedom of Information Act.

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