I thank our staff John Campbell, Marc Nolan and Emmett Corcoran for putting this Private Members' business motion together for us, in the Dail today. Simply put, this motion is to strengthen whistleblower protections. It is about enforcement and accountability in public administration. The treatment of whistleblowers in this country has been an absolute disgrace. This motion is about trying to change that. Whistleblowers are the truth tellers in our society. They expose the wrongdoing, protect public funds and uphold integrity in our institutions, yet despite the Protected Disclosures Act and its alignment with the EU whistleblower directive, too many brave individuals have paid a heavy price for doing the right thing. Careers have been destroyed, disclosures have been delayed and coercive confidentiality agreements have been used to silence the truth. This is not justice and this is no acceptable. The scale of whistleblowing in Ireland today shows why this motion matters. In 2023 alone, there were 1,162 protected disclosures made to public bodies. Some 734 of those reports required follow-up and 161 cases were sent for further proceedings. One single disclosure in the HSE led to €3.7 million being recovered for the taxpayer. That is the value of speaking up but here is the reality. The Workplace Relations Commission saw whistleblower complaints triple last year, with 301 cases, a 201% increase. That tells us something is broken. People are still being penalised for telling the truth. As public representatives, we see every day how secrecy and bureaucracy undermine trust. Take housing in the council, for example. Some of us spend months making representations, attending meetings and fighting for families who desperately need a home. When a house is allocated, the local authority has now made a decision it will not tell us who got the house in our own constituencies. That is madness gone wrong. If we are doing the work, we should be told the outcome. That lack of transparency is the same culture that punishes whistleblowers. It is about control, not accountability. Look at school transport. Parents come to us, give us all the details and ask for help getting a bus seat for their child. Now they have to send an email authorising us to act on their behalf before we can even contact Bus Éireann - another layer of bureaucracy. Why? Do they think we would make up stories as TDs about a child wanting to get a bus seat? No, we do not but the system tries to burn you out and make you walk away from the truth. Too many offices do not want to give answers. That attitude of avoiding responsibility and scrutiny is exactly what this motion seeks to change. Earlier this year I raised a shocking issue of financial advisers in west Cork and Kinsale. People poured hundreds of thousands of euro of their own private money into investments, thinking they were safe because these advisers were regulated by the Central Bank. When we finally got a meeting with the Central Bank, it told us the advisers were regulated but can sell unregulated products. I will say that again: regulated advisers selling unregulated products. The people who lost their life savings are devastated, mentally, emotionally and financially. In their own way, they are whistleblowers too. They spoke up, embarrassed and broken, because the system failed them. Closer to home, local whistleblowers, including home helps, came to me and said they were ready to work but patients were being told there was no one available. When I raised the issue in the Dáil, one of those home helps lost their hours. That is retaliation; that is the punishment for speaking the truth. Whistleblowers come in all walks of life. They are ordinary people who refuse to stay silent when something is wrong. The motion is about giving those people real protection. It calls for swift, independent investigations, enforceable sanctions for obstruction and personal accountability for officials who destroy evidence or delay inquiries. It bans coercive NDAs, demands transparency through quarterly reporting and expands the powers of the Protected Disclosures Commissioner. It even proposes a pilot reward scheme for disclosures that recover public funds because honesty should never come at a personal cost. Protecting whistleblowers is not just a legal obligation but a constitutional duty under Article 40.3 of Bunreacht na hÉireann and a moral imperative. Other countries reward whistleblowers. In the United States, whistleblowers who help recover public funds can receive up to $30,000 of the amount recovered. Ireland needs to follow that lead. Australia and Canada have strict timelines for investigation and delays are penalised. We should adopt similar standards. If we fail to act, we fail those who risk everything to defend the public interest. The message we need to send is in Ireland truth will never be punished and those who expose wrongdoing will be protected, supported and vindicated. I am disappointed to hear the Minister of State saying the Government will oppose the motion and put down a countermotion. That is a delaying tactic. That is kicking honesty down the road. Government Members should be ashamed of themselves to do that and should reconsider their decision.

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