The Supreme Court has agreed that a worker’s internal workplace complaint about personal health or safety can qualify as a protected disclosure under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014, even without a public-interest element. The case was sent back to the Labour Court for a rehearing to decide the facts.
Mr Justice Peter Charleton’s judgment, delivered on 1 December 2021, concurred with Mr Justice Gerard Hogan’s principal judgment and added observations on the scope of the legislation. The judgment says the Labour Court had not yet determined the facts, and that the rehearing must decide them as well as address the law.
Mr Justice Charleton said the Act’s wording made it impossible for the courts to impose a requirement that a disclosure concern the public interest or have an impact beyond the worker personally. He pointed to the Act’s treatment of contractual employment claims, which he said are confined to the private sphere, and its separate reference to danger to the health and safety of “any individual”. In his view, that wording covers a worker who reports a personal safety concern to a supervisor.
The judge contrasted a worker reporting that animals were not being properly stunned, after management ignored earlier reports, with an employee telling a supervisor about a cut foot and asking for sick leave. He said the Act covers both situations, although the facts of this case had not yet been found.
He also observed that the Act does not use the word “whistleblower”, but refers to a person making a protected disclosure. In ordinary usage, he said, whistleblowing usually involves revealing significant information about wrongdoing that affects public safety or the public interest. The Act, however, does not require an internal workplace complaint to be made outside the workplace or to demonstrate a wider public impact.
The judgment noted that a worker’s motivation is irrelevant under the Act, while the worker must reasonably believe wrongdoing has occurred. It also described the special remedies available where a worker is unfairly dismissed for making a protected disclosure, including a potential increase in the compensation limit from 104 weeks’ salary to 260 weeks.
Mr Justice Charleton said any change to narrow the Act’s reach was for the Oireachtas, not the courts. The Supreme Court’s order, as described in his judgment, was to return the matter to the Labour Court for rehearing; the judgment does not decide the underlying factual dispute or its final outcome.