Ireland may struggle to implement an EU directive on whistleblowing by the December deadline, officials fear.
The country is one of few in the EU to already have whistleblower legislation. The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 offers more robust protection but all member states have until December 17 to put the 2019 directive from Brussels on to its books.
Officials are concerned about the deadline, minutes from board meetings at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform show.
“There are a number of implementation challenges facing transposition including having both the legislation enacted and the institutional arrangements in place by 17 December 2021,” the minutes say.
“There are some policy challenges facing transposition including the future operation of the ministerial reporting channel, the designation of competent authorities to receive external reports, the roles of the ombudsman and the Workplace Relations Commission and the development of effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties.”
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John Devitt, Irish chief executive of the campaign group Transparency International, said that Covid-19 was partially to blame. “The legislative agenda has put everything back nine to twelve months. That is to be expected. We were told they were aiming to have it in place by December 17,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Public Expenditure said it intended that the legislation would be “enacted by the deadline of December 17”.
She pointed out that there were a number of significant changes to the Protected Disclosures Act (PDA) arising from the directive. These include the expanding of the personal scope of who can make a protected disclosure including volunteers, unpaid trainees, shareholders and others. There will also be an obligation on all private sector organisations with 50 or more employees to establish formal channels and procedures for their staff to report wrongdoing.
In proceedings where a person has been penalised for reporting wrongdoing, the burden of proof will be reversed so that it is the employer, not the employee, who must prove that the penalisation did not occur because the employee reported wrongdoing.