Last June, I said something that many people across this country already knew. Whistleblowers in Ireland are not protected. In fact, they are destroyed. The Tánaiste stood up in this very House and told it our laws are among the best in Europe. He said the Government values these people. Since then I have sat with countless whistleblowers, well over 50 of them, from every corner of the public service, from civil servants to local authority staff, nurses, Defence Forces personnel, people in universities, people representing nursing homes and State agencies. Their experience is simple. They do not feel protected. What they do feel, is punished. They feel threatened, isolated and abandoned by the State that they went out to protect and try to defend to the best of their ability. Why is the reality so different from the Government’s press release? It is because the key protections are ignored in these laws. Basic rights are denied to the whistleblower, access to records is blocked for the whistleblower and the full financial strength of this State is used to grind those people right into the ground. Every Member of this House knows the truth. A law is only as strong as those who implement it. Let me give an example. I welcome Sergeant Maurice McCabe and Mr. John Barrett to the Public Gallery, along with others. Both of them have stood up for honesty, integrity and the duty of public service, and both have paid an enormous personal price for standing up and doing the right thing. In the case of Mr. John Barrett, one of the most shocking I have ever come across in my public life or ever even read about, in September 2024, he received a letter purporting to tell him he was to be sacked as a senior civil servant from the Minister for Justice. We must bear in mind that the Minister for Justice had no legal authority to do so. Only the Government can dismiss someone at that senior level of the Civil Service. The Minister acted alone. Her actions were not legal and were not constitutional in any basis whatsoever. Worse still, the dismissal relied purely on a disciplinary investigation by the Garda Commissioner, who had no power whatsoever to initiate it. The process was tainted from the very start. It was not independently run, it was not fair and the crucial documents providing Mr. John Barrett's innocence were deliberately withheld for years. The most extraordinary fact and the absolutely amazing fact that I find about this entire case is that there was never one complaint against that man. Not one complaint was ever put in writing. There was not one allegation. Everything was fabricated about that man. Letters from 2018 were provided afterwards. They were hidden from the Minister and from the courts, and it resulted in millions of taxpayers' euro being spent defending a false witness against that man. That was not a mistake. That was a strategy and it was clearly aimed to destroy that man and to send a message to every whistleblower across the State: keep your head down, do not speak out and do not put your head above the parapet when you are taking us on and telling the truth about us. Across the system I have witnessed similar patterns from the more than 50 people I have met. I call it the hidden playbook. It is delay, deflect and deny. Quarterly updates are ignored, disclosures are not investigated, records are withheld and people are targeted. When the whistleblower asks for help, the request is often sent straight back to the person about whom the complaint is made or who has perpetrated the wrongdoing. Meanwhile, this State uses its vast financial resources to power itself and spends endless resources in legal fees, all to destroy the whistleblower. A whistleblower cannot do the same. That imbalance tells a story of its own. I say each Member of this House that we need to reflect on the values of this House, what this House truly stands for and what the EU law stands for and how it is implemented. We need to reflect that honestly in this Chamber and in this House. It is a system designed to silence people, not to protect the people of this Republic. This cannot continue. This House has a duty to change it. We in Independent Ireland intend to bring forward legislation in the coming months to level the playing field, enforce accountability of those who misuse their powers and deliver real protection for those who speak up. Before I conclude, I want to acknowledge the courage of the people in the Gallery today: Mr. Ciarán Kenneally of Tusla; health whistleblowers, Shane Corr, Peter Behan and Margo Hannon; Yvonne O'Rourke of the Women of Honour; George McLoughlin of the Department of enterprise; and Noel McGree of the Irish Prison Service. Noel McGree lost everything. He lost his home because of standing up and speaking out. Why did he do it? It was because he reported millions of euro that had been stolen and theft of State property. His reward was to lose his home and his livelihood. He is here in the Gallery today and I salute him. I feel so sorry for what he has gone through in this scenario. Their stories are very different but the pattern is continuously the same: delay, deflect, deny, punish and exhaust the whistleblower. The message is always the same in the Civil Service and in other bodies - keep the head down, say nothing and let the system carry on as it is. However, these people refused to do that. They put the truth first, they put their country first and they put Ireland first and Ireland is better because of them. I mentioned Ciarán Kenneally, a man who brought the whistleblowers to my attention first. This man has been destroyed by the State and has been left financially bereft by the State. There are whistleblowers in the Galley who will tell the Minister of State what the State did to them. In each individual organisation, there is a playbook. There is a playbook at hand here.

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There is a seat on this side of the House for Deputy McGuinness.

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