Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 8 March 2022
211. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Finance the number of protected disclosures received by his Department in each of the years 2019 to 2021 and to date in 2022, in tabular form; if an external contractor has been engaged regarding a protected disclosure over that time period; if so, the cost of same; and the number of protected disclosures that were rejected, accepted and that remain under review for the time period in question. [13051/22]
View answerSection 22 of the Protected Disclosures Act requires the publication of a report in respect of protected disclosures received in the preceding year setting out certain information in respect of protected disclosures received. For the purposes of complying with section 22, my Department publishes information regarding protected disclosures formally identified as such, without identifying the person making the disclosure.
Previous reports indicate that one protected disclosure was received in 2019 and no protected disclosures were received during 2020 or 2021, with a report of this due to be published by June of this year. There is no protected disclosure to date in 2022.
Tabular summary:
|
Year |
No of Protected Disclosures |
|
2019 |
1 |
|
2020 |
nil |
|
2021 |
nil |
|
2022 |
nil to date |
An external contractor, from the Panel established by the Office of Government Procurement to provide services in respect of protected disclosures to Government Departments, was engaged to investigate the protected disclosure received in 2019 on foot of a competitive tender. That investigation has now concluded and the total expenditure involved was €65,672.09.
In line with section 16 of the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 in order to protect the identity of the maker of protected disclosures, my Department cannot disclose the nature of disclosures, nor the occupation or area of work of the persons who made protected disclosures to their Department. However I can confirm that none of these protected disclosures were made by an official (current, former or retired) of the Department.
In broad terms a protected disclosure is a disclosure of information which the discloser believes may reveal wrongdoing and which came to the attention of the discloser through their employment. This is a very broad category of information and I expect that in many cases disclosures falling into this category are received and dealt with properly without the person making the disclosure or those receiving it ever adverting to the fact that the information constitutes a protected disclosure.
The obligations which arise in respect of protected disclosures consist principally of not penalising the discloser for making the disclosure and protecting the identity of the person making the disclosure in some circumstances. These obligations would be routinely met without the need for any legal obligation to compel this to occur, so that it is generally not relevant whether the information constitutes a protected disclosure within the meaning of the legislation or not. It is therefore not possible to be certain that no disclosures which fall within the definition of protected disclosures but which have not been formally identified as such have been received and in fact it is very likely that this has occurred.
It is for these reasons that it is not possible to provide a comprehensive and exhaustive response to the Deputy's question. Having said that, it is important to state that my Department has put in place policy and procedures for the making of Protected Disclosures in the Department of Finance, which have been developed in line with the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 and agreed by the Department’s Executive Board. This sets out the process by which a ‘worker’ of the Department can make a protected disclosure, what will happen when a disclosure is made and what the Department will do to protect the discloser.
The process supports the Department’s strong commitment to ensuring that the culture and working environment of the Department encourage, facilitate and support any member of staff of the Department in ‘speaking up’ on any issue that may impact adversely on the Department’s ability to properly and fully carry out all its roles and responsibilities to the high performance standard required. Two alternative confidential recipients have been nominated to receive protected disclosures from internal staff, in the event that a staff member does not wish to make the disclosure to their line manager or the normal senior management team. These nominees are the Head of Legal and the Compliance Officer. To date, neither of these officers have received such an internal protected disclosure.
