Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the legislation in respect of protected disclosures. My experience of the process has been shocking, to be honest. I have been dealing with a case in which, one year later, the person making a protected disclosure is still waiting for anything to happen. Complaints were made to the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council, the HSE, the Health and Safety Authority, public health and HIQA, yet not one of these groups would take the case because a private Covid-19 testing centre had no statutory body looking after it. I will give a brief overview of what was disclosed to the health committee through a protected disclosure process. The disclosures included hazardous waste being stored incorrectly, staff failing to change personal protective equipment, PPE, face masks being worn after excessive use, a lack of cleaning equipment for swabbing areas, staff using hand sanitiser instead of changing gloves, a lack of general PPE, toilets not being cleaned properly, swabbing bays not being sanitised periodically and laboratory staff collecting kits from dirty swabbing areas. It goes on and on. The list was endless. This person was horrified by the conditions within the testing centre. I set the process in place and we sent emails and made the connections. One year later, we still have had absolutely no word back in respect of that protected disclosure.

I struggled to figure out what I was supposed to do and with whom I was supposed to connect, so Members can imagine what it would be like for a member of the public to try to figure out how you do this. One of the really important pieces of the Bill is in section 9, which inserts a new section 6A, dealing with internal reporting channels and procedures, into the principal Act. I absolutely welcome the establishment of channels for receiving reports. This will ensure there is a designated person with whom one can connect and who will be able to support the person making the disclosure through the process. The designated person will be able to go back and look at the evidence and try to collate all of that to help the person make the protected disclosure.

I like the fact that an acknowledgement has to issue with seven days. As I stated, we are a year down the road in the case I mentioned. I connected with the person today and it is about six or seven months since the last connection was made in that regard. The designation of a person is essential to ensure no disclosure falls through the cracks. I welcome the establishment of the office to co-ordinate the protected disclosures process, as well as the fact that a person making a protected disclosure will have a designated person who will decide whether there is merit in the claim.

This is really important legislation. It will be amended as time goes on. It is so important because persons making a protected disclosure are putting their job, and sometimes their career, at risk. They are not just risking the job they are in; in some cases they will also be risking their career or that pathway because some areas of employment are very small and everybody knows one another. If persons making a protected disclosure do not have that support, they feel completely and utterly isolated.

The reason we have these protected disclosures is that we hear of these incidents, like the one I have outlined, which was a catalogue of horrendous failures by a company providing a very important testing service during the Covid-19 pandemic. We were relying on those data, information and people to do their job properly, to be open, to be honest and to ensure that all of the data being processed was correct and safe. Unfortunately, it was not.

This is very important legislation and I look forward to it being implemented.

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