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What happens if you contact the Commissioner
From Office of the Protected Disclosures Commissioner (OPDC)
Published on
Last updated on
From Office of the Protected Disclosures Commissioner (OPDC)
Published on
Last updated on
You can make a report of wrongdoing to:
Most people first contact their employer to report wrongdoing. Your employer may have a policy and a dedicated reporting channel for dealing with reports of wrongdoing, which you can use to make your report.
If you do not want to make a report to your employer, you can consider contacting a prescribed person. Prescribed persons are generally regulators in the areas that are subject of allegations. Here’s a link to a full list of “prescribed persons”.
If, having considered the options available to you, you are not sure who to contact, you can make a report to us, the Protected Disclosures Commissioner.
If you are or were employed by a public body you may be able to make a report to Government Minister who has a responsibility for the public body. If you make a report to a Minister, you must satisfy additional conditions to qualify for the protections under the Protected Disclosures Act. When a Minister receives a report they must, without having considered the report, send it to the Protected Disclosures Commissioner who will identify the appropriate prescribed person or other suitable person.
In the course of obtaining legal advice from a barrister, solicitor, trade union official or official of any exception excepted body within the meaning of section 6 of the Trade Union Act 1941.
To other external persons who are not specified above, for example you can make a report to a journalist. If you make a report to an other person, you must satisfy additional conditions to qualify for the protections under the Protected Disclosures Act. We strongly recommend that you seek advice before making this type of report to assess whether you satisfy those conditions.
You can read more about how to report wrongdoing here.
If, having considered the options available to you, you are not sure who to contact, you can make a report to us. If you are unclear, or do not know who to make your report of wrongdoing, you can contact us .
Our primary role is to ensure your report gets safely to the right ‘prescribed person’ . If this is unclear, we will decide who the most appropriate prescribed organisation or other suitable person is. This may include your employer in certain, very limited circumstances.
To make a protected disclosure to the Commissioner you must also reasonably believe that the information you disclose and any allegation you make is substantially true. We will check if there is an appropriate prescribed person to deal with your report and, where there is, we will send your report to them. We will not investigate what you say in your report or check whether or not it qualifies for protection before we send it to another person.
If the Protected Disclosures Commissioner decides there is no appropriate prescribed person to send it to, we may deal with your report as the recipient of last resort.
For more information on how we handle reports, please see our procedures here.
If you have any doubt about what is meant by making a protected disclosure or reporting wrongdoing, you may wish to seek advice from Transparency International Ireland