The Debrief
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What is the weekly debrief and who are the panel guests?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
And it's that time of the week when our panel is going to debrief the big news stories of the week. And I'm joined in the studio by Elaine Loughlin, Irish Examiner Political Editor, Sinead O'Carroll, News Editor at The Journal, and Adrian Weckler, who's Tech Editor with the Irish Independent. And Elaine, I just want to have a brief word with you first about the developments this week in relation to the protected disclosures in the Gardaí on foot of Orti Investigates. And we've been covering this in detail on the programme here. Do you expect, given what you're hearing around the place, that this is going to develop into a big political story in the next couple of days?
I think it's definitely something that the opposition is going to pursue because it dominated the first week of the Dáil with both the Taoiseach and Minister Helen McEntee, of course, was Justice Minister at a time when a lot of these issues were happening within the Gardaí. And both the Taoiseach and the minister, it has to be said, rightly came out and said they're precluded from speaking about a lot of this because the legislation prevents them. And that was it's relatively new legislation. It was established and passed in order to protect the whistleblowers who, you know, we saw at the very centre of this programme this week. And they certainly do not feel like they were protected. and then in the Dáil I think there were some answers given by Helen McEntee around what she may or may not have been aware of and we know that two of the whistleblowers who were actually in that protected disclosures unit were responsible for handling these and were so concerned that they themselves went on to make protected disclosures they were effectively moved out and new people put in there so there was a lot of questioning around that
Helen McEntee at one stage said her understanding of it was that this was actually going to move from a part-time unit to a full-time unit, so it was a bolstering of the unit. And then when she was pressed again, she said that Drew Harris, the then Garda Commissioner, didn't really make her aware of the mechanics or the nitty gritty, the full details of the changes. So I think even there, the slight difference in answers given, I think that's certainly a line that the opposition will be pursuing, but also a lot of other issues.
Right, well, let's see what emerges over the course of the weekend and into next week as well. Now, I want to talk about the news of Michael Healy-Ray being attacked as well. There's an arrest in the case. I know there's going to be a court appearance or there has been this morning. So we won't go into the specifics. But what I want to talk to you about, Sinead, is whether politicians now feel increasingly vulnerable.
How are the Garda protected‑disclosure whistleblowers becoming a political story?
Matty McGrath was on the programme with me yesterday and I just was aware that he mentioned his constituency staff as a particular concern. And you'd wonder whether... constituency clinics will have to be held now in a different
way. Yeah, like one of the real characteristics of Irish politics is how accessible our politicians are, like with constituency clinics, with very accessible phone numbers, email addresses and being part of the community. That's a huge aspect of Irish politics. But in a kind of more feeble atmosphere that is, I think, heightened by what happens online rather than what happens in real life. The tensions are now so obvious for politicians or would-be politicians, which I think is kind of quite worrying. Like, you know, the Irish Independent had a story today, Mary Regan, that 60 TDs and senators have received funding to improve security at their homes and offices since the last general election. Like, that's people who aren't just doing it so that they can get upgrades to their homes.
These are things like intruder alarms and... cameras and you know there was obviously the Oireachtas knew they had to do something they increased that spend from 5,000 each to 25,000 each because they know these are the kind of things that politicians have to they shouldn't have to put up with it but they're the things that they're experiencing this level of
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