Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have great respect for the Minister of State but his speech is extraordinary. It basically says that we are lowering the protections but are not using the directive to do so. Given Ireland's record on whistleblowers and given that the whole idea is that we are meant to be improving things, delivering a speech that basically admits that we are lowering protections, although we are not using the directive to justify this, and reading out a whole section of the directive to demonstrate that it is okay to lower the protections as long as the directive is not used to do so sends an incredibly bad message, not to mention being a massive contradiction in itself.Perhaps some self-examination is needed at the Department. It appears to be a case of being allowed to do this versus it being entirely against the whole spirit of what we are supposed to be doing, and against what everybody is saying this legislation is about. This is very surprising to me. I do believe it is lowering the protections but I did not expect this to be acknowledged so clearly.

To be clear, the directive has been used in that the line in terms of encouraging reports to be made in other ways and so forth, which again is in the directive, has been directly quoted as one of the rationales for this section. Again, even that argument does not stand up.

I also note that the directive asked that we would encourage people to report to various other channels. It did not give a mandate for people to discourage. This is a real problem in Ireland. There is a thing in Ireland whereby people do not trust reporting to their managers because their experience has been that it goes horribly wrong. How can we encourage them to be confident to report to their employers or to their managers? How can we build a culture in the public service that encourages that? This would involve, for example, measures around having proper internal channels and having stronger protections against penalisation. Perhaps it might involve three or four high-profile examples where somebody actually blows a whistle and does not have a horrible time. That would be great and it would be encouraging. It might encourage people to come forward to their managers. Instead of trying to encourage people to be confident in using a mechanism that has failed them, we try to discourage them from the mechanism which, as the Minister of State himself has outlined, is exactly what people use.

Is the goal of the legislation for there to be fewer protected disclosures or for there to be more? The goal should be for there to be more so we learn about problems earlier and better, and that people are confident in bringing forward protected disclosures on issues. The main channel people have been using has been clearly stated as the channel of people going to a Minister. I could list off these cases but I do not like to drag individual examples in. The issues that have been highlighted to us by whistleblowers have been very important. They have related to massive amounts of public money. They have related to significant breaches of human rights. They are very important issues. Yet, we are trying to discourage people from using the channel that everybody uses. In his response, the Minister of State did not address the danger that people will still probably use this channel because it is the one that makes sense to people. The idea should be to try to ensure there is no wrong door, and that if a person goes to a Minister, although he or she should go to somebody else, that person gets redirected, not that he or she gets blocked from going to a Minister. There is a danger that people will go to the Minister and, again, the issue will not get treated properly or in a proper way because the person did not go to the employer first. There is also the danger the person may not have access to protections under the Bill. That is a very serious danger.

We know what actually happens and works. We have chosen not to address it. The problem had always been the Minister knowing what to do with that. That was solved elsewhere. There is no solution in this. This is a discouragement of whistleblowing through the channel that is most often used. It is a diminution and a regression in the protections for whistleblowers, as acknowledged, and it is a regressive step in that regard. It is a real pity and I am very surprised because while I did expect that the general principle might not be addressed, it was my expectation that some of the very extreme language around "imminent" and "irreversible" would have been addressed. I will press the amendment.