The Protected Disclosures Act 2022 requires Irish companies of 50 or more employees to have a formal internal reporting channel. Many don't. Most that do have bolted on something that barely qualifies.
Book a conversationThe Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Act 2022 transposed the EU Whistleblowing Directive into Irish law. Since January 2023, companies with 50 or more employees have been legally required to establish, maintain, and operate a formal internal reporting channel for protected disclosures. Since December 2023, this applies to companies of any size.
The channel must be accessible to all employees. It must preserve confidentiality. It must acknowledge receipt of disclosures within seven days. It must follow up within three months. And it must be operated by a designated person or department.
Penalties for non-compliance include fines - and the legal exposure that comes from having no documented channel in place when a protected disclosure leads to litigation.
If an employee makes a protected disclosure - about financial misconduct, safety issues, or regulatory breaches - and your organisation has no documented internal channel, that employee has grounds to go directly to a regulator or legal authority. The absence of an internal channel is not a technicality. It is a material legal risk.
For companies in financial services, insurance, or any Central Bank regulated sector, the governance and culture obligations under fitness and probity rules add an additional layer of requirement around how concerns are managed.
"Many organisations assume their existing HR email address or suggestion box qualifies. It does not. The Act specifies confidentiality, acknowledgement timelines, and follow-up obligations that informal channels cannot satisfy."
VentEcho is built to meet the requirements of the Protected Disclosures Act 2022 - not as a secondary feature, but as a core design principle.
| Act requirement | VentEcho | HR email / suggestion box |
|---|---|---|
| Accessible internal reporting channel | ✓ QR code + intranet widget | ~ Partial |
| Confidentiality of reporter preserved | ✓ Structurally anonymous | ✗ Email is identifiable |
| Acknowledgement within 7 days | ✓ Automated, logged | ✗ Manual, inconsistent |
| Follow-up within 3 months | ✓ Dashboard tracks status | ✗ No tracking mechanism |
| Designated responsible person | ✓ Routing to named owner | ~ Depends on setup |
| Audit trail and documentation | ✓ Full audit log | ✗ No systematic record |
The Act sets a floor. VentEcho helps organisations go further - by making the channel one that employees actually use. A formally compliant whistleblowing hotline that nobody touches is compliant on paper but useless in practice.
Because VentEcho is frictionless and accessible, it captures concerns before they become formal disclosures. Most employees who might eventually raise a protected disclosure would rather resolve the issue informally first, if they believed someone would actually listen. VentEcho is that first step.
The Protected Disclosures Act 2022 is not a grey area. Either you have a qualifying channel or you don't. We can walk through what the Act requires and where your current setup falls short - in 30 minutes, no obligation.