Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and his officials for being here. I have some concerns about the legislation. I am delighted to see another whistleblower, Peter Behan, here. I am sorry Antoinette and Noel McGree and other whistleblowers cannot be here.

My first concern is about section 8, which removes the right to make protected disclosures directly to a Minister. This applied to me back in 2000 when I finished my PhD. It was not a solitary act of whistleblowing but a piece of research supervised by Dublin City University, right up to the level of its registrar and its solicitors at the time, Arthur Cox. I was also supervised up to the level of Chief of Staff within the Defence Forces and had to seek written permission to continue the research. What I found was the systematic and systemic sexual assault and rape of female soldiers. You can make a moral argument for theft, lying, even killing. That is the premise upon which we use force in the armed forces and An Garda Síochána. However, there is one thing we as a species cannot tolerate and that is sexual assault, sexual abuse and rape. That organisation did everything in its power to destroy me as a person and my family. It sent the military police to my house to intimidate me, my wife and our young child. This was not Shanghai or Myanmar or Beijing. This was Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, a place the Minister of State is familiar with. Removing the right of a person to approach the Minister is a retrograde step and reduces protections for whistleblowers.