An empirical study of the purpose of the Irish Protected Disclosures Act 2014

The Protected Disclosures Act 2014 enacted on 15 July 2014, is Ireland’s first pan-sectoral whistleblowing law. The purpose of the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 is described in its preamble as being ‘An Act to make provision for and in connection with the protection of persons from the taking of action against them in respect of the making of certain disclosures in the public interest and for connected purposes.’ The aim of this research is to determine whether the 2014 Act is fulfilling its purpose of providing protection to disclosers, as set out in its preamble. This thesis contributes to knowledge by identifying the weaknesses of the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 that are undermining its purpose and makes suggestions for reform in order to remedy these weaknesses at an early stage before the protected disclosures protection system in Ireland becomes futile. For the purpose of this research, an assessment of the case law under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 from 15 July 2014 to 16 July 2018 was undertaken to highlight certain patterns emerging from the use, interpretation, and application of the Protected Disclosures Act 2014. An assessment of the prescribed persons system under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 was also undertaken in order to ascertain whether the system is functioning as intended. In addition, an analysis of prescribed persons’ compliance with the governmental guidance on protected disclosures procedures was carried out. This analysis focussed on the non-statutory framework implemented by the government to complement the legislative framework. The research also included an evaluation of the difficulties faced by organisations when implementing protected disclosures procedures in relation to balancing the rights of the discloser and the rights of the alleged wrongdoer. This thesis concludes that the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 is not fulfilling its purpose and that urgent action is required to be taken, in line with the recommendations made in this thesis

Using statutory guidance and codes of practice to build on whistleblowing legislation: the Irish experience

In our opinion, the use of Guidance regarding whistleblower protection represents best international practice with regard to protected disclosures. It is devised on the premise that a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate given the different nature and scope of public sector bodies. In the authors’ opinion, the Irish experience demonstrates how statutory guidance and Codes of Practice can be valuable methods of explaining how the law is intended to operate as well as encouraging best practice which goes beyond the minimum statutory floor of rights

Using statutory guidance and codes of practice to build on whistleblowing legislation: the Irish experience

In our opinion, the use of Guidance regarding whistleblower protection represents best international practice with regard to protected disclosures. It is devised on the premise that a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate given the different nature and scope of public sector bodies. In the authors’ opinion, the Irish experience demonstrates how statutory guidance and Codes of Practice can be valuable methods of explaining how the law is intended to operate as well as encouraging best practice which goes beyond the minimum statutory floor of rights

Isolation of Latent Player Shooting Ability in the National Hockey League

Most public research into player performance in the National Hockey League makes use of data published by the NHL itself, which is limited in scope. In the context of evaluating player shooting, i.e. the ability of a player to affect the probability of a shot of theirs becoming a goal, the use of public NHL data may produce a bias, as it does not include data about the movement of the puck prior to a shot. This thesis makes use of a privately tracked dataset which does include information regarding pre-shot movement, and inspects whether the use of this more refined dataset has a material impact on the analysis of player shooting talent. The probability of a shot becoming a goal given external factors (such as location, pre-shot movement, and game state) are used to estimate the probability of a shot becoming a goal, independent of the shooter's ability. Then, the impact a shooter has on the goal probability is captured as a coefficient estimate in a logistic regression model. This analysis is run over both datasets, and the results show that there is evidence that the more granular dataset eliminates pre-shot movement bias in the evaluation of player shooting ability

"Blue movie : five films about coming to your senses"

1. Blueprint. An insecure teenage model takes control of her sexuality when she switches positions from in front of the camera to behind it. (sight) 2. Blue Whales. A young mother who has lost all desire for sex finds that the solution lies in her fantasies about whales. (sound ) 3. Clear Blue. A lesbian comedian's relationship is tested when she goes to outrageous technological lengths to become an egg donor for her cousin. (smell) 4. Bleu Nuit. A mother with grown children whose husband suggests "swinging" to spice up their sex life must decide what to do when she likes it. (taste) 5. Blue Moon. A retiree in her sixties whose husband becomes impotent after having his prostrate removed must learn to masturbate for the first time. (touch

Looking Under a Better Lamppost: MeV-scale Dark Matter Candidates

The era of precision cosmology has revealed that about 85% of the matter in the universe is dark matter. Two well-motivated candidates are weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and weakly interacting sub-eV particles (WISPs) (e.g. axions). Both WIMPs and WISPs possess distinct {\gamma}-ray signatures. Over the last decade, data taken between 50 MeV to >300 GeV by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT) have provided stringent constraints on both classes of dark matter models. Thus far, there are no conclusive detections. However, there is an intriguing {\gamma}-ray excess associated with the Galactic center that could be explained by WIMP annihilation. At lower energies, the poor angular resolution of the Fermi-LAT makes source identification challenging, inhibiting our ability to more sensitively probe both the Galactic center excess, as well as lower-mass WIMP and WISP models. Additionally, targeted WISP searches (e.g., those probing supernovae and blazars) would greatly benefit from enhanced energy resolution and polarization measurements in the MeV range. To address these issues, a new telescope that is optimized for MeV observations is needed. Such an instrument would allow us to explore new areas of dark matter parameter space and provide unprecedented access to its particle nature.Comment: White paper submitted to Astro2020 (Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey) on behalf of a subset of the AMEGO tea