Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has described those who might be experienced in receiving the reports. The danger is that where this involves those who are experienced in receiving reports but whose clients are effectively other companies, there is a little bit of a power imbalance. If a company is engaging somebody because they have a particular expertise in dealing with the reports, the concern is that it would incentivise certain kinds of results coming out of those reports, if the Minister knows what I mean. It would be wrong for this to become any form of troubleshooting or perceived service provision.The centre stage piece in any disclosure and report needs to be what is being disclosed - the subject matter and content of it - rather than a matter of how a company will manage it. The mechanisms we have discussed internally are important in that regard. I worry that we will end up with people who get very good at that process, for example, of assessing whether it is a substantive report and disclosure or whether it needs to be followed up. There will be people who get very good at filtering those out. That would be regressive. I know that is not in any way the intention of the Minister.

I am sorry to go to a bad case scenario but, unfortunately, we have to do so. In general, this is part of the long legacy of whistleblowing in Ireland, from which I hope we are moving forward. The Minister is aware, however, that if all the significant energy the State and various entities and private companies have put into making disclosures and concerns and issues that have been highlighted disappear had, instead, been redirected to addressing the problem, many areas of public life and private company life would be much better. That is why I need to highlight that concern.

I am not attached to these two particular ways in which I have tried to tackle it. I have tried to make sure we do not create that dynamic. I am not tied to these two ways of approaching it and I may come back on Report Stage with further thoughts on how we can avoid situations such as the one I described which, it is to be hoped, will not arise. All present can imagine how such a situation could arise, however.