David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the referral of the penalty points issue by the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter, to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. It took 14 months for this to happen and the Minister must explain why it took so long for the issue to be referred to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. In the past 24 hours a number of Ministers have attacked individual members of the Committee of Public Accounts and the committee itself, which is very unhelpful in its handling of the penalty points issue. The Minister for Justice and Equality and the Ministers, Deputies Pat Rabbitte and Brendan Howlin, the three Ministers who have been most critical of the committee, need to realise the only reason it was investigating the issue in the first instance was the Comptroller and Auditor General's report which pointed to clear systemic problems and abuses in the system. He stated it had cost the State a considerable amount of money. The Committee of Public Accounts is seen, rightly, by citizens of the State as one of the few checks and balances on the Executive where one of the arms of the Oireachtas can hold to account people who spend the public's money. I find any situation where its work is undermined by the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána or any Minister to be unhelpful and I caution against it. We all welcome the fact that the issue was referred to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, but I call for a wider debate on whistleblowing in the State and the need to introduce legislation to protect whistleblowers. People looking in from the outside at the way these two whistleblowers were treated and some of the comments made by the Commissioner at the hearings of the Committee of Public Accounts last week and by the Minister for Justice and Equality know they will not make it easier for us to encourage whistleblowers in the public or private sector to come forward. It was a clear failing in what happened in the banking sector where people did not cry "Stop" and come forward because of a fear of doing so. The shameful way in which the two whistleblowers in question were treated flies in the face of what the Government states about wanting to introduce legislation. I call for a debate on this issue in the coming weeks.