The back news story of the Dublin Port Tunnel is not its faults; it is the role of the whistleblower/s.

It is a social good that the faults in the Tunnel (and more importantly, any attempt to ignore or conceal those faults) should become public.

Prime Time did not identify the source of the information disclosed in its TV programme. There is no need; that information could only come from within Transroute (or, possibly, but unlikely, NRA). Transroute [ironically its website is "under construction"] has, since the airing of the Prime Time programme, recognized SIPTU as the representative of Transroute’s employees working on the Tunnel. In short, the Prime Time insider/source is a Transroute employee, a member of SIPTU and a whistleblower.

The Government is formally committed to protection of whistleblowers but is stalling on its implementation in the form of a legislative compulsive-obsessive pattern of behaviour, seen HERE and HERE.

A piecemeal solution seems now the objective as can be seen HERE and HERE

Connected with this subject is the Government assault, [by the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Act 2003] on Freedom of Information principles.

For a history of FOI in Ireland (as of 2003) see HERE.

The Tunnel’s faults will be the news story when there is an accident, possibly a very serious one; whistleblowing is a mechanism to forestall such an event and is valuable for that reason.

Of one thing we can be sure; a government led by Bertie Ahern will not introduce legislative protection for whistleblowers.

(Which is not to say he is alone in his attitude).