Susan O'Keeffe (Labour)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "That"' and substitute the following:

"Seanad Éireann noting the commitments in the Programme for Government in

relation to introducing whistleblower protection

— commends the Government's decision to introduce overarching legislation for enactment by the Oireachtas providing for good faith reporting and protected disclosure on a uniform basis for all sectors of the economy;

— endorses the Government's decision to expedite the preparation of this legislation by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in view of the urgent requirement for such legislation which has been confirmed by recent events;

— strongly supports the Minister's objective of providing legal assurance and certainty so that any party coming forward when significant matters involving risk to the public arise will be afforded the necessary legal protection to enable them to do so in confidence;

— welcomes the Minister's intention to ensure that the legislation fully addresses all relevant human resource, organisational and governance issues drawing on the experience of whistleblowing provisions already in force in Ireland and abroad;

— shares the Minister's goal, in the context of the implementation of appropriate legislation in due course, to secure the necessary change in the culture and behaviour of organisations — both in the public and private sector — to seek to ensure that serious wrongdoing is identified and brought to light.".

I thank the Minister for being with us. I am grateful to Senator Mullen for the theme of this important motion and the need to debate the requirement for whistleblowers legislation. The Government intends to provide protection for those who come forward in good faith, regardless of where they are from or the state of their employment. We face a monumental task because we cannot legislate for people, to tell the truth. We can offer a safeguard and create an environment which it makes it easier for those people who wish to come forward and tell a story or disclose something difficult, but we cannot make them do that.

I draw the attention of the House to an event I wrote about in January 2009, the commemoration of the 25 years since the death of the teenager Ann Lovett, something which many people here will remember. Many people will remember the moment when it was disclosed. As I wrote in 2009, when she and her tiny baby died the town that she lived in, Granard, folded them away just as towns and villages in Ireland had done for years. However, someone in the town understood the enormity of the event and saw fit to tell the media. Some five days after the funeral, the nation learned of Ann's cold and lonely death, her school bag and her dead son found lying next to her as her life faded away. It was a turning point in this country. It was a moment when we saw fit to be able to stand up and tell the truth about something which was very difficult and had happened many times before in Ireland but people had been afraid to come forward.

In my career as a journalist and documentary maker I have persuaded many people to speak out, even when there was nothing in it for them. In many cases there is nothing in it for people to come forward and speak up. We must ensure at every stage that we can offer some protection so that even if there is nothing directly in it for a person, we seek to protect them. In the first programme ever broadcast on investigating the abuse of children by members of the clergy, people were literally shaking and crying as they told of their pain and experience, yet were unable to say out loud what had happened because of their fear. They were afraid, if we can believe it, of their families, friends, neighbours or communities. Effectively, they were afraid of us. We are afraid of ourselves if we cannot stand up and own up. That is the culture which we must begin to try to encourage. We can do this with legislation but it will take time. When I exposed malpractices in the beef industry, I was personally criticised and told constantly that in the interests or good of Ireland, I should stay quiet. I found it an extraordinary irony that, for the good of Ireland, we should conceal the truth. This was not so long ago. It was 1991, a mere 20 years ago.

I take great heart that I can stand in this House today to discuss whistleblowers legislation and support an amendment in which we recognise the need not to cover up, that the truth is the most important thing and that encouraging people at all stages in all places at all times to come forward with their stories is what we need to do as a society and country to grow up and take our place. If we want to stay in the darkness of the 19th or 20th centuries and encourage people to stay quiet, we will do ourselves extraordinary damage.

In 1999 Deputy Pat Rabbitte of the Labour Party introduced a Whistleblowers Protection Bill which was subsequently parked for many years and finally abandoned 2006. The old bogeymen, legal and constitutional issues, were given as the reason for that. That was then and this is now. The Labour Party and Fine Gael have pledged to introduce overarching whistleblowers legislation. I hope the model for this legislation will be the Public Interest Disclosure Act which, as we know, has worked very well. To our shame, it has been working in the United Kingdom for the past 11 years. The words "public interest" are at the heart of that legislation and should also be at the heart of whistleblowing legislation when brought forward here. It is not about what is interesting to the public; car crash, gossip-style stories should not drive such legislation. We are talking genuinely about the public interest. The Government will introduce legislation to ensure that in the public interest we can finally bring to light issues that cause trouble, including corruption, fraud and even death. These matters are at the heart of our society and although we cannot legislate to get rid of them, we can encourage finding a better way to cope with their causes under law. I commend the amendment to the House.