‘Minimalist’ Central Bank not doing enough on whistleblowers, says Labour spokesperson Ged Nash

The Report on Protected Disclosures said regulators had received 231 whistleblower statements from financial services workers last year

Labour's Finance spokesperson Ged Nash

Jon Ihle

June 29 2022 02:30 AM

The Central Bank has been criticised for “taking a minimalist approach” to its legal obligations for publishing an annual whistleblower report consisting of a single page.

The Report on Protected Disclosures was published on the Central Bank website Monday and said regulators had received 231 whistleblower statements from financial services workers last year – plus one from a Central Bank staffer.

The document said only that the information had “led to enhanced supervision, risk mitigation programmes, inspections, warning notices and enforcement action”. No further detail was provided.

Labour finance spokesperson Ged Nash TD said the bank should provide “more detailed and transparent reporting” to “encourage more people who work in the sector to come forward to make disclosures”.

“The Central Bank is taking a minimalist approach to fulfilling its legal obligations to report on the number of protected disclosures made to it in the previous year,” he said in a statement to the Irish Independent.

“Confidence, and the need to build greater levels of trust in financial services in this country, would be better served if more detail was provided on the nature of the disclosures that were made, the approach that was taken by the Bank to the processing of protected disclosures and precisely how the regulator is utilising the information it has secured through the process to deal with cases of wrongdoing in the sector and to drive change.”

The annual report is required under the Protected Disclosures Act, a 2014 law meant to shield whistleblowers from retaliation.

It provides confidentiality to workers who come forward with evidence of breaches of financial regulation and lays out a clear process for dealing with such allegations.

A spokesperson for the Central Bank said the Report on Protected Disclosures must be published in a form that does not risk identifying any individual who has come forward.

“The Central Bank therefore does not publish any information that may compromise the legislative protections that apply to persons involved,” the spokesperson said.

They said the Central Bank had published the report “in accordance with its obligations” and that protected disclosures were “an important tool to assist the Central Bank in discharging its supervisory and enforcement mandate”.