OPPOSITION PARTIES have strongly backed the call from Director of Public Prosecutions James Hamilton for legislation to protect whistleblowers in cases of alleged white-collar crime.
Labour’s spokesman on justice Pat Rabbitte has urged the Government to accept his party’s proposed legislation, the Whistleblowers Protection Bill 2010, currently on the Dáil order paper.
Fine Gael’s spokesman on justice Charles Flanagan said the statutory protection of whistleblowers was an “integral part” of its Open Government Bill 2010.
Sinn Féin’s spokesman on finance Arthur Morgan said the enactment of legislation was “vital to ensure that many of the corruption and malpractices that led to the current economic crisis are stamped out once and for all”.
Mr Rabbitte said the Labour Party had been pressing for the introduction of legislation to protect whistleblowers for more than 10 years.
“As far back as March 1999, I introduced a Whistleblowers Protection Bill. On that occasion, the Fianna Fáil/PD government, ashamed to vote it down, parked it in a committee while it promised to work on its own proposals.
“Nothing happened for almost seven years until 2006, when the Government abandoned its pretence and removed the Bill from the Dáil agenda.”
He said the Government of the day claimed the legal advice was that it should not proceed with the Bill but the real reason was “that they were afraid it might offend the powerful vested interests”. Earlier this year, Mr Rabbitte had tabled an updated version of his 1999 Bill.
Mr Flanagan said an integral part of Fine Gael’s New Politics Policy and Open Government Bill 2010 was the protection of whistleblowers.
“There is virtually no protection for whistleblowers in the financial services and business sectors, while whistleblower codes and guidance throughout the public service are sparse,” he said.
Mr Morgan said: “There are many cases where information which is in the public interest is not revealed because individual workers justifiably fear penalisation by their employer in the absence of measures to protect them if they make such disclosures.
“We have seen enough cases where the absence of such legislation allowed illegal and unacceptable practices to continue unchecked – we are footing the bill for this now,” Mr Morgan added.
Mr Hamilton had said on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics programme on Sunday night that it was time to examine the issue of introducing a general whistleblowers’ charter because in many instances, if there was no whistleblower witness, it was impossible to build a case.
“The problem is in the absence of that, people will be afraid to come forward because, for example, they may be victimised at work.
“They may lose their job and even though they may be able to bring an unfair dismissals case the damages which they might get could be limited to two years’ employment which could be a lot less than the actual loss they have,” he said.