Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank him for his attention this afternoon. Senator Higgins has outlined a similar rationale for her amendments to that applying to our amendments Nos. 37 and 38. I will speak to them briefly in order that we can get to the Minister's response.

Amendment No. 37 seeks to guarantee that where a public sector employee makes a disclosure to the relevant Minister but that disclosure is not in compliance with the requirements for making a disclosure, he or she will receive the same protections as those afforded to someone who makes a compliant protected disclosure. In essence, our amendment proposes to add another provision to ensure greater security for those who are making protected disclosures to a Minister.

Amendment No. 38 seeks to provide greater guidance, oversight and transparency in respect of the new procedure the Bill introduces for making protected disclosures to the Minister. We were not in favour of scrapping this new process whereby the Minister will simply hand on a protected disclosure to the new protected disclosures office, but our initial amendments in this regard were not accepted. We are trying to improve the new process by ensuring there is more clarity with regard to the guidelines on how it is to work. We want to ensure those who handle the protected disclosure on behalf of the Minister have sufficient training and that those who qualify for making a protected disclosure have proper access to the relevant information. Our amendment is about adding additional provisions to the Bill.