Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

While the provisions of this Bill are to be welcomed, I have concerns over the exclusion of a number of elements of the recommendations of the finance committee, especially the retrospective elements. We sat on the committee week after week, and we listened carefully to what was said by a string of whistleblowers who testified before us. Some of them have had their lives ruined due to their experiences. I have spoken to many whistleblowers who have lost marriages, families, jobs, pensions and homes. Being a whistleblower in this State is a job of enormous personal cost in many situations. I struggle to think of a particular case where it did not involve some significant personal cost to an individual. A few were former public servants. Where whistleblowers suffer a loss, they deserve compensation for the loss. The wording of this Bill has omitted to make elements of it retrospective.

There is a tendency on the part of the Government when it comes to EU directives or legislation to be very slow to amend or change it. The recommendations of the finance committee seek to strengthen the Bill. Surely, as an independent country, we are not locked into delivering only what Europe tells us to do. Surely, we can strengthen any directive to make it better. The recommendations of the finance committee do not seek to water down or weaken the Bill but seek to enhance it. That includes the retrospective element.

I have dealt with many whistleblowers over the years who have sacrificed much to expose wrongdoing. The State's attitude towards whistleblowers leaves an enormous amount to be desired. In many cases, whistleblowers have had mud slung at them by the State and that mud has stuck.

The reputations of whistleblowers have been damaged even by Governments in the past. I have heard Ministers in this Government contradict outright the facts that have been brought to them. It is very common for a State agency to call a whistleblower a liar, to imply they are mad or, worse still, in a famous case, to make accusations of child sexual abuse against the whistleblower. In the case of CervicalCheck, we know the State tried to gag Vicky Phelan with regard to a non-disclosure agreement.

In a recent case that I raised, Ms R received an apology, thankfully, from Tusla after having a number of inaccurate statements made about her on her file. The Tusla file said, among other things, that she was an alcoholic, that Tusla had met with her son and that her son had expressed that he did not wish to return to his mother. Ms R rigorously fought for the rights of her son and her good name. She fought like any mother would fight. Tusla has now conceded that Ms R was not an alcoholic and that the alleged meeting between her son and Tusla never actually took place. It is phenomenal stuff that happened and Tusla has apologised to her.

I asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth when he first became aware of these untruths on the file. He said he only became aware of the issues when a politician contacted him on 16 March 2021. However, Ms R has shown my office emails that she sent to the Minister five months prior to that date. When I raised that discrepancy with the Minister in the Dáil, having the documents to hand, he still denied that he knew about it at the time. In effect, the Minister was calling Ms R a liar, even in the face of documentary evidence.

Over a year ago, I had a meeting with CervicalCheck to discuss the various concerns I had about that particular scandal. At the meeting, the clinical director of CervicalCheck told me in no uncertain terms that it was her view that the courts were wrong to rule in favour of women such as Vicky Phelan, the late Patricia Carrick, Ruth Morrissey and Emma Mhic Mhathúna. CervicalCheck told me that these women were not wronged - an incredible situation. When I told the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health about these comments, the Minister said this was not the case. Again, in effect, the Government was calling me a liar in regard to a meeting that I was involved in, where I took notes and when my parliamentary assistant was also there.

On another occasion, I tried to raise in this House concerns about the Covid-19 outbreak in a nursing home in Galway, where the nursing home had asked the HSE for staffing support but had been left abandoned. The Minister responded to me: “That is a flat-out lie.” My source of information was a distraught manager in the nursing home, a report on RTÉ’s “Today with Claire Byrne” and the local GP, Dr. Martin Daly, who was of course a former president of the IMO. A month later, I secured documents under freedom of information from the HSE which confirmed not only the veracity of the story, but also that the Minister for Health had been briefed about the situation by the HSE prior to him levelling an accusation against me for lying in the Dáil about it, the report on the Claire Byrne show, the nursing home manager and Dr. Daly reporting on it.

We have had a lot of discussion in recent weeks about the Brandon report and the disability services. It was brought to light by Deputy Pringle and a whistleblower who was in touch with him. The manner in which the State treated not only the whistleblower but also Deputy Pringle is, I believe, shameful. One of the contributions is a mirror image of the issue I have just raised with regard to Tusla files. A dispute arose over the content of documentation that Deputy Pringle had furnished the review panel with and, in effect, the Deputy was made to look like a liar.

We all recall the powerful contribution of Deputy John McGuinness on the Grace case and he is to be commended on the work he did on that issue. It is my understanding and it has been reported that, behind the scenes, the Taoiseach has criticised the Deputy for his contribution on that. If the State, civil servants and Government Ministers can smear Opposition Deputies or backbenchers like this, God knows what else is happening to whistleblowers behind the scenes.

This legislation is welcome but there is a need for a change of culture in this State. The trouble is that nearly every organisation, be it a political, State or civil society organisation, seems to have an instinct that its job is to protect itself against those who are simply seeking to out grave wrongs. I can understand why an organisation would want to protect itself against vexatious allegations and so on, but when an individual seeks to highlight and out grave wrongs, the culture of that organisation should not be defensive. The culture of that organisation should seek to empower that individual to help to reform the organisation. I know for a fact that even political parties in this Chamber strongly have that instinct of defence against the greater good. That culture has to change in here. I have spent ten years in Leinster House and I have heard people from all sides of the Dáil calling for reform. Some of the simplest reform that can be achieved in Leinster House is from the political class itself. There is no evidence within this Government, since it took office in 2020, that there is a political desire for reform of itself. The legislation is welcome but it is wholly useless unless Government Ministers adopt a policy of legislating and of listening to whistleblowers, and desist from pushing back against them. The culture of organisations has to change, including in this House. I think there will be many Deputies and Ministers who will vote for this legislation tonight who have previously been involved in pushing back against whistleblowers in their attempt to protect their reputation. Such hypocrisy has to be called out. We need systemic change, not just in this legislation but also in how this Government operates.

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