QUESTIONS about how a Department of Regional Development (DRD) civil servant sent a whistleblower's complaint about ferry safety to his boss are to be raised in the House of Lords.
Ulster Unionist peer Lord Laird last night said that he would be raising questions with the Government in the Lords about the implications for maritime safety if whistleblowers felt afraid to report concerns because they may be identified to their em
ployer.
The questions stem from a six-month independent investigation into concerns surrounding the £4 million DRD-subsidised Rathlin ferry contract.
On Wednesday the investigators published their report, stating that the DRD was right to award the contract to Cork businessman Ciaran O'Driscoll in April and rejecting a catalogue of allegations against the department.
However it described the decision by a DRD official to forward the complaint of a whistleblower, who was the ferry's engineer until being made redundant more than a month ago, to Mr O'Driscoll, his employer.
The whistleblower, Jonathan Barnes, has waived his right to anonymity to speak out about the department's handling of his complaint, describing it as "appalling" and "irresponsible".
DUP Assemblyman Jim Wells, a member of the Regional Development Committee which in private session quizzed DRD Permanent Secretary Paul Priestly about the investigation on Wednesday, said that the decision to forward Mr Barnes' details to his boss was "clearly a mistake".
"That shouldn't have happened because why would people blow the whistle if that information was to be released?" he said.
"This was very simple – this was the same boat being taken over, with the same crew doing the same route," he said.
"It was a very simple re-evaluation and tender process and they got it (the method) wrong – although in the end they awarded the contract to the right person – and we wouldn't have known that had the whistleblower not come forward, although his allegations were not the ones that the department was found guilty of."
Mr Wells, who as a keen birdwatcher frequently travels to Rathlin Island on the ferry, said that there were serious lessons for the department to learn from its mistakes on the ferry tendering process.
"If this was for some major project – new trains or a fleet of buses for example – and the same mistakes were made, then the department would be in a very difficult position."
