Michael Clifford: Is price too high for whistleblowers?

Notwithstanding the protections in place, it still takes courage to come forward, particularly with information that exposes a pathetically weak moral compass in a major government department

Shane Corr, a senior civil servant at the Department of Health, went public with details of the secret dossiers. Picture: RTÉ Investigates/RTÉ

Shane Corr isn’t out of the woods yet. The whistleblower who revealed that the Department of Health was maintaining dossiers on autistic children performed a worthy public duty. He has shown courage and persistence. But the law is such that in doing so he may have left himself legally exposed. That is no reflection on the man himself, but it says something about the law.

Before examining the plight of Mr Corr as a whistleblower, let’s look at what he exposed. He availed of the Protected Disclosures Act to highlight what he saw as wrongdoing in the department where he worked.