Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)

We are committed as a Government to protecting whistleblowers. Work is ongoing at EU and national level to further strengthen those reports. The Deputy has a Private Members' motion tomorrow morning, I think, on this matter. We will get an opportunity to debate it in the round. We accept the motion tabled by Independent Deputies is well intentioned and seeks to increase protections for whistleblowers but, from an initial review, it appears to ignore many of the provisions that already exist in legislation to protect those individuals. It also contains a number of proposals which would have to be worked on in more detail and may have some unintended consequences too. We have set some of those concerns out in the countermotion, alongside our ongoing commitment to further review the legislation at both EU and national level. The role whistleblowers have is critically important and they deserve the protection of the State.

On the Deputy's contention that a Minister should have the opportunity to read protected disclosures, while I understand the intention, it is flawed. The political process needs to be separate from that. There is a clear process in relation to that. Every Minister gets a general report on protected disclosures, which is important too. There has to be an independent verifiable process for whistleblowers to be able to have the allegations or matters they have raised assessed in an independent way, separate from the line Minister, and where the whistleblower can feel it can be raised in safety and assessed with seriousness.

The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 is our national whistleblowers protection law. A major amendment to that Act was made in 2022. It was signed into law in July 2022 and commenced operation on 1 January. This is an area that we take seriously.

I look forward to the debate tomorrow morning in relation to the Independent Technical Group's motion, where the Deputy can put forward other matters relating to it. Whistleblowers in general have done this State a great service. They have raised matters that would not have come to the fore if we had not had the structures and processes in place to allow that to happen. A whistleblower should not find, in any way, shape or form, that their own situation is affected in a negative way simply because they have raised a protected disclosure that they feel is of great importance to the operation of their Department or agency or to behaviour within an agency or Department.

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