Ibec raises ‘whistleblower’ fears

Ibec has criticised the Government for not carrying out a regulatory impact assessment on the proposed “whistleblower” legislation, ahead of the initial draft of laws being drawn up.

The legislation — the Protected Disclosure in the Public Interest Bill, 2012 — which is aimed at protecting workers who expose bad practices at corporate level, was up for discussion at yesterday’s sitting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, with Ibec and Transparency International Ireland (TI Ireland) giving their opinions.

Committee chairman Alex White said the publication of the draft heads of the bill is “welcome and necessary”, as “most people agree that the current legislation, in this area, is inadequate”. However Ibec’s head of policy and international affairs, Brendan Butler raised fears over no regulatory impact assessment being carried out — assessing the potential impact and effects of the legislation — and stressed the need for the legislation to be introduced “in a sensitive and sensible way”.

“The concern we’d have would be that given Ireland is such an open economy, with a large reliance on foreign direct investment, if the legislation provided any risk to our international reputation. In framing the legislation, we must try and protect companies, sectors and Ireland, as a location of choice, from exposing ourselves to negative comment,” he added.

TI head John Devitt expressed hope that the legislation “will send a very positive signal to international observers concerned with standards of governance in Ireland“, adding that it is critical that the new laws be brought forward “with urgency, but without haste”.

“It is important we get this right,” he added, before noting that TI Ireland first recommended the introduction of “robust” whistleblower legislation, as a means of making government and business more accountable in 2009.

Yesterday’s meeting marked the second consecutive day of the committee discussing the whistleblower legislation. On Tuesday, Eugene McErlean — the former internal auditor at AIB and a consultant to TI Ireland — warned that the proposals may offer workers who might consider exposing bad practice, a false sense of security, by failing to fully protect their privacy and confidentiality.