Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The entire purpose of the exchange seems to be that, no matter what else happens, the complaint must not get to the media. I have heard from other whistleblowers. The strategy seems to be to get some of this stuff into the courts, then to get mediation and then to reach a confidential agreement to settle matters. Much of this stuff never comes out.

We have had fine-sounding words and rhetoric about how we all want to celebrate whistleblowers and make life easy, but it is a lonely place to be for a genuine Garda whistleblower. The system trains its guns on the whistleblower. Whistleblowers are demonised and undermined. This is what has happened in recent weeks, given the saga of the Committee of Public Accounts and what happened with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, yesterday. In the past 48 hours, the guns have been trained on the GSOC because it did not report to the Minister even though it had no obligation to.

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