TI Ireland has published its fourth Speak Up report based on data collected from 2,800 whistleblowers, witnesses and victims of corruption who contacted the helpline from 2011 to the beginning of 2025. The highest number of calls to the helpline in the reporting period came from the Health sector, followed by the Police and Education sectors.
The Health sector generated the largest number of whistleblower calls to the helpline and whistleblower reprisal continues to be a significant concern, accounting for 37.5% of all reports of retaliation from whistleblowers who contacted the Helpline over the period.
The report includes analysis of the Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Act 2022, case law and of the Act in practice. TI Ireland has made several recommendations for further reform. The recommendations include;
- Extending legal aid to whistleblowers, as envisaged in the EU Whistleblowing Directive.
- Extending immunity protections for workers who have made protected disclosures to include defamation liability, as envisaged in the EU Whistleblowing Directive
- Removing caps on compensation for awards to workers who are found by the Workplace Relations Commission to have suffered a detriment as a result of making a protected disclosure
- Enhancing the Protected Disclosures Commissioner and the Workplace Relations Commission's powers for ensuring compliance with the Act
- Expanding the definition of relevant wrongdoings to include breaches of soft law mechanisms such as professional codes of conduct.
TI Ireland also published a list of recommendations it has made on how Ireland's anti-fraud and anti-corruption structures should be strengthened.