Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I prepared a Bill on this issue. I commend Deputy Shatter for the time he has taken in constructing amendment No. 1. I intend to move amendments Nos. 2 and 3 when we reach them, while accepting that they are being discussed now, as part of a group, with amendment No. 1.

I was disappointed when the Government voted initially to accept my Bill, which subsequently died on Committee Stage, proving the Government was no more amenable to the Bill at that Stage than it was on the first occasion. We badly need reform in our society in the form of protection for whistleblowers. Following everything we have seen during the past four years, I would have thought it plain to everyone and common ground in the House that we need protection for whistleblowers, and not on a sectoral or segmented basis.

We all know what happened during the beef tribunal. The witch hunt was to find out who leaked information about the skullduggery and tax evasion going on at that time in the Goodman empire. We recently witnessed, in respect of Allied Irish Banks, what happens to whistleblowers. The whistleblower usually ends up outside the employment, with little enough regard had to the loss to the public interest of acting on whistleblower information and protecting the whistleblower when that information is brought into the public domain.

Our Exchequer retrieved just over €1 billion as a result of the DIRT inquiry and it is believed that came into the public domain because of an internal employee in Allied Irish Banks. That was the suspicion. More attention was devoted to that than what he had to say about wrongdoing, yet because this House, exceptionally, acted on it and caused a committee of the House to inquire into it, which retrieved more than €1 billion for the State, the reaction of the House since has been to sit idly by while inquiry by parliamentary committee has been struck down. It has done nothing to refurbish the law. The result is a loss of autonomy to the House and gradual erosion of the powers of Parliament vis-á-vis the Executive. The Government has acquiesced in that, because without its approval, Opposition Members do not have the numbers to refurbish the law.

Amendment No. 2 proposes the insertion of the words "or suspicion" because the reality of the world in corporate Ireland is the person may not be able to establish more than that it is a suspicion and sometimes the issues are so big that it is for others to establish if that suspicion is well founded. To expect someone to come out of the system and prove something or simply to do something because they are of a opinion is not good enough. The purpose of my amendment, which is to protect the reporting of suspicion as well as opinion, is necessary in this particular Bill.

Amendment No. 3 proposes the deletion of the words "has been or is being" and the replacement with "may have been or may be being". The purpose of the amendment is to widen the circumstances in which protection is afforded to whistleblowers because, as drafted, the new section 8A only provides protection for persons who report an opinion that an offence definitely has been or definitely is being committed. This should be widened to cover a situation where a person reports a suspicion as opposed to a definite opinion. Given all the skullduggery and wrongdoing we have seen in corporate Ireland - to our greatest cost within the banking system - a necessary and essential reinforcement of this Bill would be to take on board that concept.

Most people do not believe we could have reached the stage we have reached this evening and they ask fundamental, straightforward questions about how all this could have gone on in the banks with nobody blowing the whistle. The answer is that if a person were to blow the whistle, he or she would have lost his or her employment. That is the reality, yet we are in a situation now where, notwithstanding the debate we have just heard, this country's economic sovereignty is at risk because of the behaviour and reckless conduct, if not criminality, of the banks. That is why we are where we are. We do not know what will come out of tonight, we do know what is going to come out of tomorrow and it is plain that the Government does not know but everything for which people fought in this country is at risk now because of misbehaviour, wrongdoing and reckless conduct in the banking system.

What is the point in us condemning this and the Minister saying he will agree with us about the banks if we do not take steps to prevent this ever happening again? We have one slight Bill before us. Our anti-corruption laws, even to comply with our international responsibilities, are not up to speed. It is still only a slight Bill but it would be strengthened if the Minister was prepared to take on board these amendments. If the Minister for Finance, for example, is successful this evening, he will return tomorrow evening like Chamberlain waving a piece of paper in his hand saying "Peace in our time. We've got a bailout for the banks." That is yet another bailout for the banks but the reality is that will have the most onerous implications for our society and for our economy, whether he can separate the banks from the international perception that this is all sovereign debt now because of the guarantee and one cannot separate one from the other and one can provide financial assistance only to a member state, not to a bank.

If the member state wants to put it into a bank, that might be capable of being negotiated but how did this harm befall us? How did we all let one small casino bank grow like Topsy until it threatened the entire banking system? When The New York Times asked "Can a bank bring down a country?", it was sneered at in circles in this House and outside but that is exactly the situation we are tottering on this evening. A bank can bring down a country and, therefore, if there is not intent on the part of the Government to refurbish the legislation so that this kind of reckless misconduct cannot happen again, why are we here? We must be able to take measures to ensure that, while not stifling business and entrepreneurship, plain wrongdoing or suspicion of wrongdoing can be brought to the attention of the relevant authority without the person bringing it being put at risk of his or her employment. I ask the Minister to make a positive response to the amendments.

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