Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
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777. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he argued for any extra provisions to be made in the forthcoming legislation on protection of whistleblowers to protect any employees of airlines or companies associated with the provision or operation of aircraft or flight crew, who may wish to disclose information which they consider to be of significance to protecting the safety of the travelling public; and in view of some serious incidents which have occurred in the aviation sector. [7996/14]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) has statutory responsibility for the regulation of safety standards of civil aviation in the State. Ireland has an excellent record and reputation in aviation safety and I am determined to maintain and defend that and ensure that public confidence is not undermined.

The importance of ensuring that all relevant information on aviation safety is reported, collected and evaluated is well recognised and Directive (EC) 2003/42 on occurrence reporting in civil aviation was adopted with this objective. This Directive was implemented in national law by S.I. 285/2007 under which the IAA is designated as the competent authority tasked with establishing and maintaining a mechanism for collecting, evaluating, processing and storing relevant civil aviation “occurrences”.

Under this legislation, people working within the aviation industry can disclose information to competent authorities across the EU on a confidential basis without fear of their identities being disclosed and consequently of retribution. The legislation also provides rights of redress where an employee believes that they have been subject to prejudice by their employer for reporting safety occurrences.

As there are already robust legislative arrangements in place at EU and national level dealing with safety reporting in civil aviation, I am not seeking to have additional provisions specific to this sector included in the Protected Disclosures Bill 2013.