Provision is to be made in forthcoming legislation to protect whistleblowers in the health service, it was confirmed yesterday.
Officials at the Department of Health are in discussions with the Attorney General on the issue at present.
The long-awaited Health Bill, 2006, to be published today, is to be amended as it passes through the Oireachtas early next year to ensure people who blow the whistle on bad practice are protected.
The Bill as it stands at present allows for the establishment of the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQUA) and an independent nursing home inspectorate for all public and private nursing homes.
There have been many calls for legislation to protect whistleblowers since the publication of the Lourdes hospital inquiry report earlier this year. The main Opposition parties, Labour and Fine Gael, called for the introduction of such legislation as did the Irish Nurses Organisation.
The Lourdes hospital inquiry looked at the high rate of Caesarean hysterectomies carried out at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, over close to three decades from the early 1970s. Many of them were carried out by the former obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Michael Neary, who has been struck off the medical register for unnecessarily removing the wombs of a number of patients. It was only when a midwife at the hospital blew the whistle on what was going on in 1998 that the practice stopped.
Ms Harney said yesterday that lessons had to be learned from that.
She confirmed the HIQUA legislation being published today will be amended later to put in a provision in relation to whistleblowing.