Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
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Paul Lawless (AON), Mayo

It has emerged that a whistleblower made a very serious protected disclosure to the Minister for justice in September 2023. It alleged that the gun holsters being used by An Garda Síochána were faulty and dangerous. The whistleblower said that the warnings about the unregulated gun holsters had been ignored. The faulty gun holsters are alleged to have contributed to the murder of one garda because it was so easy for the killer to slip the garda's gun from the holster, and the serious injury of another because the holster effectively triggered the trigger when it was being pulled.
The disclosure alleges that Drew Harris stopped an independent safety review into the holster from taking place. As this disclosure directly implicated the Garda Commissioner, it was legally routed to the Department of justice. The Office of the Protected Disclosures Commissioner ruled that the Department of justice was the appropriate body to investigate the disclosure. However, the then Minister for Justice, Deputy Helen McEntee, directly intervened and told her officials to send the matter back to An Garda Síochána to investigate. We have documentary evidence to show she blocked the Department from investigating.
When this was returned to An Garda Síochána, the whistleblower himself was named. The Minister for justice broke the law in relation to this. The whistleblower's identity should have been protected. Instead, the whistleblower was exposed to the same employer against which he was making the allegations and, consequently, his life became hell. When the matter was referred back to An Garda Síochána, the two people responsible for looking into it were so outraged that they themselves blew the whistle and subsequently submitted protected disclosures. The Garda Commissioner responded by effectively shutting down the protected disclosures unit, leaving the new whistleblowers without a job.
This is a massive scandal and, in many ways, it is even worse than the Maurice McCabe scandal a number of years ago. Does the Tánaiste accept that the Minister for justice broke the law in her handling of the situation? When the Tánaiste was Minister for justice, a protected disclosure landed on his desk in relation to faulty ammunition. What role did he play in the decision to refer that disclosure back to An Garda Síochána?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01