Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Mairéad Farrell for her opening remarks. I also thank Minister for his opening remarks because while we will not always agree, we can agree to disagree.

I welcome the establishment of a new office but it needs teeth and adequate resources. Obviously, that can be chiselled out. There are some problematic sections including the exemption for smaller companies with fewer than 50 employees, which has already been mentioned. That will have to be teased out on Committee Stage.

The problem at the moment is that while people have been brave enough to come forward and make protected disclosures, the existing legislation, which is based on the European directive, is very weak. There is no procedure by means of which one can find out if a whistleblower was protected and if the issue that was reported was ever resolved. If there is going to be a commission, it needs to be fully resourced because it is very difficult, even for us, to get a reply all the way up to the final stop. When a report comes back to say that the issues have been addressed, often it is the case that they have not been. What happens then? There is nobody to investigate the body in question.

The issues of free legal aid and mental health assistance will also need to be teased out on Committee Stage. It is imperative that we protect whistleblowers. They should have 100% protection. To leave such provisions out of the Bill would be very worrying because we know that all of those who have been brave enough to make protected disclosures in the past have been damaged mentally, physically and financially. People do not make protected disclosures for glory or honour. Their actions are about doing the right thing in the public interest. Reference is made in the Bill to the option for whistleblowers to remain anonymous, although some are quite happy for their name to be made public when they make a protected disclosure.

I hope that we can resolve the issues of concern in this Bill. We will work together on it. This is about setting out a gold-standard protected disclosure regime that will benefit everybody in this country and I look forward to working with the Minister on the legislation.

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