Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 15:

In page 50, between lines 32 and 33, to insert the following:

“(2) The Principal Act is amended by the insertion of the following section after section 12:

“Protection of reporting persons

12A.For the avoidance of doubt and without prejudice to natural justice, any investigation carried out under this Act shall not involve a person named in a disclosure of a relevant wrongdoing, save where that person is required to provide information or testimony in the course of such an investigation.”.”.

I am thinking of one case, and I believe there have been others, whereby the persons about whom a disclosure has been made are involved in the investigation. They may be managers or employers engaged in wrongful action. In a Department, they would often be managers or senior managers. They have been involved in the investigation of the matter or, in one case I know of, one such person was required to sign off on payment for penalisation. These are the persons about whom the disclosures were made and who had been engaged in wrongdoing. It is worrying that we sometimes see this. It is one of the reasons people often go, especially since we do not have provisions to go round in the Bill, to Ministers. They know their senior managers are not to be trusted on the matter. In this case, they may go to the commissioner and so forth but we do not want that the commissioner then sends it over to the Department and it somehow ends up back on the desk of the person it is about. If a person is named in a protected disclosure, that person should not have any power in the investigation of that disclosure. It is a basic but important point. If it cannot be addressed through this amendment, I urge that it be addressed through guidelines or other provisions in the Bill. That is a danger and has occurred in the investigation of matters and in persons seeking compensation for penalisation. This is one of the biggest fears people have in making a protected disclosure and it needs to be clearly addressed.