Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

When the Government was transposing the EU directive on protected disclosures, I was clear at the time and I voiced significant concerns. I felt it was perhaps deliberately going to weaken the transposition. I said I felt the setting up of the protected disclosures office was a retrograde step and that it removed a protected disclosure as a political issue. Previously, an Opposition TD could deliver a protected disclosure to the relevant Minister and then seek to know what progress had been made. Now, the Minister will simply say that has been handed to the protected disclosures office and it has nothing to do with them anymore. We have had very serious cases recently, which were well publicised and extensively dealt with in this House. Those were the whistleblowers in the Grace and CHI cases. We need to make sure we are protecting these people. People come forward because they passionately believe something has gone wrong, and the people have been wronged. We need to protect them. Far too often in this State they are just not protected.

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