Whistleblowers - Brave acts deserve protection

For decades, the whistleblower within Irish society has been vital in uncovering misbehaviour in institutions as varied as the Catholic Church, the Oireachtas, the banks and the Garda Siochána.

The latest example concerns GoSafe, Ireland’s privately run speed detection operation. In a report on RTÉ’s Prime Time, a former GoSafe employee claimed that a number of motorists were wrongly fined after he advised management that he had been unable to set up his detection equipment properly.

The whistleblower said he only discovered that the infringements had been processed through the courts when he was called to appear as a witness in a speeding case against one of the motorists involved.

In response, GoSafe has kicked to touch, diverting media queries to the gardaí. Their response, in turn, has been a variation of “move on, now… nothing to see here”, claiming that the variation resulting from the misaligned detection camera was not relevant.

In a statement to RTÉ, the gardaí said the affected motorists will not be refunded “as the setup issue would have resulted in a maximum deviation of 2km/h, and the detected speeds, taking into account this deviation, were above the limit”.

The first question is: why should anyone — not just the motorists involved — believe that Garda statement?

The second one is: why would the nation’s police force seek to justify such prosecutions on the basis of clearly flawed technical evidence?

But the third question is the most pertinent of all: why did the whistleblower hide his identity?

The latter — sadly — is the easiest to answer.

Whistleblowing is a dangerous practice. All too often, superiors don’t want to know, and then object strenuously when the frustrated whistleblower reveals all to the media. Doing the right thing often means exposure to being fired, defamed, blacklisted, and physically or psychologically abused.

The experience of Sergeant Maurice McCabe and Garda John Wilson is moot. The thanks they got for exposing penalty points corruption was to be castigated by Garda authorities and Justice Minister Alan Shatter.

Corruption by its nature is secret and to expose it often requires ordinary people who witness it to exercise heroic virtue by exposing malpractice.

This can endanger lives and livelihoods, which is why stringent and robust whistleblower protection laws are essential. The problem is that we possess neither the safeguards nor the inclination to protect whistleblowers, despite the fact that Ireland is, since 2003, a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Corruption. This was ratified in November 2011, when the current administration came into office on a platform of openness and transparency in government.

Since that date, Ireland’s international reputation for combating corruption has, in fact, worsened.

As the 18th century Irish philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke put it: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Those good men — and women — who ‘do something’ should not only be protected but embraced.