Ministers discuss previous night’s TV – not a Friends repeat but a new whistleblower show

For The Irish Times this reporter has dressed as a clown, a panto dame and a Christmas elf but has never before been made to wear a tie. You must wear a tie in the media gallery of Leinster House. It goes with all that dark wood, brown leather and brass. This is new territory but the nature of the assignment is not: at Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil they’re reviewing last night’s television. They are specifically reviewing the findings of the RTÉ Investigates programme about the treatment of Garda whistleblowers – most damningly about the treatment of the whistleblowers from their own former whistleblowers’ unit. There’s extra excitement because one of the off-screen characters of that programme is here (like better-known unseen TV characters such as Wilson from Home Improvement): former minister for justice Helen McEntee, now Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. READ MOREMcEntee is in the leader’s hot seat today; perhaps because the Taoiseach is still busy with the real people of Ireland at the Ploughing Championships – or perhaps because he has a dark sense of humour. (The Taoiseach was actually meeting the president of the European Council at Farmleigh.) The mood is grim, not least because of the assault on Kerry Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae the day before (“he’s very shaken,” a TD says) but also because of the seriousness of the allegations. Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty gets stuck in with a question about when, as minister for justice, she knew about the issue of defective gardaí gun holsters, about RTÉ’s claims that the warnings of whistleblowers were ignored and about the claims made in the programme that the defective holsters led to the serious injury of one garda and the death of another.McEntee maintains the Protected Disclosures Act of 2014 not only protects whistleblowers but it also protects ministers from commenting about anything related to protected disclosures. When Doherty quibbles with this, she says: “I won’t be lectured to by a party whose history when it comes to protecting gardaí is less than standard.” This causes dark muttering from the Sinn Féin benches. (The love language of Irish TDs, it turns out, includes a) disapproving head shaking, b) head-cocked confusion and c) dark muttering.) Doherty does his best. He says: “That’s just nonsense!” and “It’s ridiculous!” but it gets him nowhere. Gary Gannon from the Social Democrats also wonders what she knew and when. “Confidentiality protects the whistleblower,” he says. “It does not protect the Government and senior Garda management from accountability for its failings.” The Minister again stresses her inability to comment (at length), increasingly sounding more Helen GPT than Helen McEntee. Labour’s Alan Kelly lands the hardest blow. “It doesn’t bring me any pleasure to be standing up today to say what I have to say,” he says, with the demeanour of a man who is more disappointed than angry. (“It brings him some pleasure,” says someone in the press gallery.) He speaks of the suffering of whistleblowers and their families. He holds up a defective gun holster. (You can bring props into the Dáil chamber?)Kelly asserts McEntee’s partial culpability, recounting how she passed Det Supt Brian O’Reilly’s protected disclosure about the defective holsters to the Office of the Protected Disclosures Commissioner (OPDC), who, in turn, directed that it be investigated by her own secretary general. “You, as minister for justice, directed that the investigation be removed from your secretary general and redirected to An Garda Síochána, thereby usurping the OPDC’s statutory direction,” he says.“Thereby, you, as minister for justice, revealed Brian O’Reilly’s identity. By doing so you deprived him of the legal protections he was entitled to, and exposing the nature of his allegations. In doing so, you acted without legal authority and directly interfered with a serious and significant protective disclosure.” He ends with: “Perhaps it was just incompetence or a mistake.” McEntee is appalled and strongly rejects the suggestion of incompetence or illegality but the mood is dark. The next question is about the shortcomings of Irish Water. Things move very fast around here.