Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)

On 12 November, the Taoiseach told this House that legal advice states a Minister cannot read protected disclosures. That claim has caused real alarm throughout the country because if a Minister cannot read protected disclosures, the Minister cannot verify whether the Minister is being misled. It is an extraordinary position for this Government to have in a system that has repeatedly accused, attacked and retaliated against whistleblowers. A recent case shows that danger exactly. For decades, a cash-based duty exchange system has operated in the Irish Prison Service, not secretly but quite openly. A Workplace Relations Commission ruling has confirmed it, RTÉ "Prime Time Investigates" has exposed it, a senior retired governor called it universal and it is on the record of this House from 1996, meaning we have known about it here for over 30 years. Yet, when the matter reached the State legal apparatus of the Chief State Solicitor's office, that office told a statutory tribunal that the system did not exist and argued the point relentlessly that if it did exist, it would be fraudulent. We are left with only two possibilities, either the State participated and believes in a fraudulent case or the Chief State Solicitor's office misled a statutory body and perverted accountability. Both scenarios undermine our rule of law and raise the same question, namely, who is the State legal system protecting? Is it protecting the people's interest, the public's interest or is it saving the Government and State from embarrassment?

Part of a wider pattern is that whistleblowers who raised the issue, and others, have been sidelined and dismissed. Legal advice presented to Ministers appears to contain disclosures rather than deal with the ongoing wrongdoings. The Committee of Public Accounts has already confirmed that the system is obstructed. On page 10 of a report from January 2022, the committee states that the terms of reference for the protected disclosure investigation were drawn too narrowly and that suspected criminal activity could not even be referred to An Garda Síochána. That is not a flaw in the system; to my mind, it is a design in the system. It was reinforced in writing by the Taoiseach in August 2019 when he was Leader of the Opposition. A Minister told him a whistleblower's disclosure had been handled through legal advice and treated as a normal personnel matter, and he was asked to stand down. As I understand it, and if he was here today he could confirm it, he did stand down. That whistleblower lost his career four months later and has been fighting for justice ever since.

I will put direct questions to the Government. Is the Government satisfied that the legal advice given to the Ministers on protected disclosures is accurate, lawful and compliant with the Act of the EU directive?

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