Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

While the directive proposes that people should be encouraged to go directly to public bodies, my concern is that the way this provision is phrased is less about encouraging people to do that and more about discouraging reports to Ministers. It is by having positive measures within public bodies that we will encourage employees to act. When cases begin to pile up, people who make a disclosure may find that nobody is penalised and no action is taken to address the substantive issue they highlighted. Once we have seven, eight, ten or 20 examples of that happening, people will be encouraged to go directly to their public bodies.At the moment, however, there is not that encouragement, which is positive encouragement. Instead, what we have seen in this Bill and in the section, sadly, are measures to make the ministerial channel less inviting and less open. The fact that people are not going directly to their own employers in public bodies first is because they have not received good treatment there and because they have seen others very publicly receive very poor treatment when they have done that. Therefore, encouraging people to go to those is around positive measures that need to be taken whereas I believe discouraging another channel is a regressive step, sadly. We have moved forward in many other aspects of the Bill but I think this is a regressive step. Some of the language I highlighted is really discouraging and dissuasive and creates a chill effect and, indeed, perhaps a fear of consequence for persons who are doing something for others and not for themselves. I feel really strongly about this section and I will come back to it on Report Stage.

I may come also back with a different version of amendment No. 39 on Report Stage. The key issue for me is whether there are safeguards to ensure there should never be a situation, although we know there have been multiple situations, whereby any person or persons who are directly or indirectly effectively the subject matter of a protected disclosure would be able to influence or be in a decision-making position around how that protected disclosure is dealt with. Similarly, I am aware of instances whereby the decision as to whether somebody should receive payments or restitution in terms of the penalisation they received ended up being routed through the person about whom they made the original disclosure. Again, I will bring forward another version of that. It is really important that this element at least should perhaps go in so there are safeguards in that regard. I am not sure how we address them but we really need to do so because that scenario happens. I do not see that the Bill guards people. We can have all the good practices we want but that question of who is making the decisions and ensuring there is a real firewall is something we can perhaps improve or strengthen.

As I said, I fundamentally believe that if anybody has a matter that is in the public interest and, certainly, a matter that could damage the public interest, that is enough of a bar and they should be able to go to a Minister as a public servant and as a citizen. That is why I fundamentally think the constraints in this section are too much. I will press amendment No. 28.