I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill and I thank Independent Ireland. More importantly, I thank those in the Gallery. They are heroes of the State who get absolutely battered for telling the truth. It is an absolute and utter disgrace. I have a script but I want to speak about the comments of the Minister of State and the Government amendment. The amendment states — whistleblowers have at their disposal effective channels to report breaches of EU rules confidentially, both internally (within an organisation) and externally (to a competent authority); — whistleblowers' reports are properly investigated and acted upon by the organisations and competent authorities; and — whistleblowers are protected from retaliation; This is in the Government amendment and it is absolute verbal diarrhoea. I have brought protected disclosures to two Taoisigh and four Ministers over the past three or four years. A man is now deceased because he was killed in Stryker in Carrigtwohill two years ago. The protected disclosure is still ongoing. A good friend of mine came to me last Friday regarding an issue that had been going on for seven years involving Scouting Ireland and the abuse of children by a now deceased schoolteacher and scout leader who I knew myself, Denis O'Shea. The State, and in particular Scouting Ireland, have spent seven years changing their legal teams to stall. When whistleblowers come forward, they are being absolutely battered and punished. Millions of euro in public money is spent making legal teams rich and nobody is getting an answer. I will go back to the years 2000 to 2002, when 59 people in east Cork died by suicide, 23 of whom were all around the same age. I know this will upset some people. I know four people above in the graveyard because when people made protected disclosures, they were not acted on. This aggressive man was head of the Diocese of Cloyne scouts as the regional director. He ran the Mount Melleray Scout Centre. The system is rotten and failed I do not know how many people. When we are talking about protected disclosures, we need to take it as seriously as possible. You can hear it in my voice. As Deputy Mairéad Farrell said a moment ago, we introduced an alternative Bill in 2021. It had provisions for mental health and counselling supports for families. Every single one of the whistleblowers in the last protected disclosure I brought here was paid off by the Government. The family of someone who is now deceased has been purposely split. I have been threatened for telling the truth. Some of the whistleblowers came back to me last Monday and told me they had been blacklisted and could not get a job anywhere. When we are talking about protected disclosures, we must remember each one of these and what happened to them and their families. Please take it seriously and take on board what we say. Deputy Farrell spoke about waiting for the EU. We waited 18 months for the directive to come from the EU so we could table a Bill and do the right thing. Normally when we come into the Chamber, we are trying to serve the people outside of here we are supposed to serve and do the right thing. By God, no matter how many times you try to tell the truth in this country, you are going to get battered and punished while the perpetrator skips down the yellow brick road as if nothing happened. Please withdraw the Government amendment, do the right thing, support Independent Ireland and try to move this forward. I can certainly say that we will be back to have another crack at the protected disclosures Bill again.

Sentiment score: 0.09