I will set out the formal response and we can perhaps engage on it then. The amendments will limit the ability of employers to share resources for receiving reports and conducting any investigations needed as part of follow-up. The Bill currently provides that employers with fewer than 250 employees can share resources. These amendments would limit that flexibility to employers with fewer than 50 employees and where companies are linked. Furthermore, the amendments add an obligation to carry out a data protection i…

Between now and Report Stage, my officials and I will reflect on the Senator’s remarks. I make the point that it is a provision of the directive that resource-sharing is provided for. That is an obligation within the directive, and for good reason. Although it is important to have these processes in place, we do not wish to impose an unnecessary administrative burden on employers and I do not think we should exclude the possibility that they might use the support and services of a third-party company. The Senator r…

This is a series of minor amendments to provide that the rules applying to employers in respect of sharing resources shall be without prejudice to their obligations to give further feedback if requested to do so by the reporting person, in accordance with section 6A(1)(f). Under the procedures, a prescribed person shall set out the type and content of any further feedback requested by the reporting person and the procedures of the protected disclosures commissioner shall set out the type and content of any further …

This is a series of technical amendments to replace the phrase “coming into operation”, in all provisions in the Bill where it occurs, with the term “commencement”. This is to ensure the terminology used in the Bill is in line with the most up-to-date drafting conventions used by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. There is no change to the effect of any of these provisions. The Interpretation Act 2005 provides that “commencement”, when used in respect of an enactment, means the time at which the enactment com…

I thank Senators Higgins and Ó Donnghaile for their contributions on what I acknowledge is a substantive issue in the Bill. The issue was raised a number of times over the course of the debate in Dáil Éireann. I will set out our thinking, rationale and the background to what is proposed in the relevant provisions. These amendments provide for the deletion of section 8(2)(b) of the principal Act, as amended. Section 8(2)(b) provides that a worker employed by a public body can only report to a Minister if he or she r…

We will consider in good faith any further amendments the Senator puts down. I reiterate the point that we are trying to get away from a scenario whereby the first port of call is to send a protected disclosure to the Minister. One of the issues under the existing Act is that it is silent on precisely what the Minister should do with the protected disclosure when it is received. At least under the Bill, we have the provision whereby the office of the protected disclosures commissioner is being set up, which is wher…

I want to absolutely assure Senator Higgins and the wider public that introducing any form of chilling effect is not the intention in this Bill. This is a good Bill that strengthens protections for whistleblowers and puts a process in place that I believe will deliver better outcomes. That is really important. That is certainly my only agenda in bringing forward this legislation. I will consider the points the Senator made in that respect. She raised then a specific issue with regard to section 12 of the Bill and, …

This amendment provides for an amendment to section 10 of the principal Act, as amended by this Bill, to reinstate the requirement in the original Act that a worker making a public disclosure should reasonably believe that the information reported is substantially true. The original text in the Bill transposed the provisions concerning public disclosure that are set out in Article 15 of the directive. The conditions at Article 15 are, however, in addition to the conditions that apply under Article 6(1)(a) of the di…

This forms part of the package of measures we are providing for retrospective application of the legislation. Section 20 provides for the amendment of section 42 of the Freedom of Information Act to create an exemption from the FOI Act for records pertaining to protected disclosures. This is in order to protect the identities of reporting persons and persons concerned and to prevent the FOI Act being misused to "out" a reporting person or to impede or frustrate follow-up on a protected disclosure. This amendment pr…

I thank Senator Flynn for raising this issue. It is important to point out that interim relief is being extended under the Bill to all acts of penalisation, which is a positive development. This amendment proposes to reduce the threshold for employees who wish to apply to the Circuit Court for interim relief following penalisation. It proposes to reduce the threshold from “an employee who claims to have suffered penalisation wholly or mainly from having made a protected disclosure” to “an employee who claims to hav…

These amendments are related to the provision for an offence of knowingly making false reports. Article 23.2 of the directive provides that such penalties should apply only to reporting persons who make such reports. The Bill as drafted, however, provides that a person who makes a report containing any information that the reporting person knows to be false commits an offence. A concern has been raised with my officials that this could be interpreted to apply not only to reporting persons but also to any other pers…

Amendment No. 52 is a Government amendment.

We deleted the penalty for false reporting and replaced it with the better definition. The concern was that due to the way it was presented, it would not only apply to the whistleblower but could apply to anybody who handled the transmission of the protected disclosure. That is clearly not the intention of the directive or the Bill. It is in favour of whistleblowers and anyone else who is part of the process.

Amendment No. 59 introduces a new penalty for bodies corporate that commit an offence as set out in the legislation. It provides for a fine of not less than €500,000 on indictment. This is significantly higher than the criminal penalties currently provided for in the Bill, which provide for fines ranging from €75,000 to €250,000. These penalties can apply to individuals as well as corporate bodies. The criminal penalties in the Bill were considered with the Office of the Attorney General with the purpose of alignin…

This is a set of technical amendments to sections 25 and 31 to tidy up the numbering of the sections. Section 25 adds a new paragraph (3) in the current draft of the Bill to the Schedule. I am informed by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel that the correct drafting convention that should have been used here is to number the inserted paragraph as 2A, and this is what is provided for by this amendment. The amendment to section 31 tidies up the numbering in the principal Act.

Section 22(9) of the Act, as amended, provides for the protected disclosures commissioner to prepare and publish an annual report on the operation of the Act not later than four months after the end of each calendar year. The Office of the Ombudsman has suggested, and I have agreed, that this should be extended to six months after the end of each year to align the reporting date with the other statutory reports published annually by the Ombudsman. These amendments give effect to this proposed change.

These are technical amendments to delete unnecessary signpost references in the draft Bill. The purpose of the amendments is to delete the references to “Section 15” and “Section 3” in the schedules, which are neither correct in terms of where they appear, nor necessary. They are intended as signposts only as to the sections to which they relate and nothing turns on them from a legal perspective.

I thank Deputy Ryan for the question. Public service pay has been governed by a system of collective agreements since the Croke Park agreement was negotiated in 2010. These collective agreements have helped to ensure public pay is managed in a sustainable, affordable and orderly manner. These agreements have also enabled significant reform of public services and changes to work practices. The value of public pay agreements to the Government and the taxpayer is ensuring pay costs are managed in a sustainable and ord…

I thank Deputy Ryan. As we stand here today in the Chamber, the officials from my Department are in negotiations with the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to see if new pay arrangements can be agreed. I do not want to say anything that would be unhelpful to that process. I hope it comes to a successful conclusion. We are entering a critical phase in those discussions now. The aim here is to strike the right balance. We must be fair to public service workers and recognise the impact of…

I have acknowledged publicly the need to go beyond terms of the current agreement. This is why those negotiations are under way today, and it is hoped they will come to a successful conclusion shortly. The backdrop is challenging in a number of respects. I have acknowledged the impact of inflation on the living standards of workers, both public-sector and private sector workers. There is an increasing level of uncertainty about the global economy. We are facing significant fiscal pressures in the State also. We mus…