‘Did you get to sit down and have a brief meeting with the Minister for Justice?’

‘No. Absolutely Not. As usual, the Minister was unavailable… I have never met a Minister for Justice. In forty years of campaigning for a public inquiry.’

‘Ever?’ ‘Ever.’

‘I am told in the forty-seven years since, there have been 23 Ministers for Justice.

You have never had a meeting, face to face, with any of them?’

‘No. Never.’

RTE Drivetime, Interview with Osgur Breatnach, September 2023.

Mostly when we think about whistleblower reprisal — all the things an organization can do to silence a dissenter who won’t stop talking—we think about action. Blacklisting, threatening, firing, intimidating. But what about just doing absolutely nothing. For fifty years. Big silence is a powerful tactic against whistleblowers, and one we rarely talk about.**

In 1976, Osgur Breatnach was wrongly arrested and convicted of the famous Sallins trainrobbery, with two others. ‘I was kidnapped off the streets. I was tortured and framed, went through an unfair trial’; he told RTE Drivetime.

Osgur’s treatment – medically evidenced –had met the UN definition of torture; he recalled being ‘beaten for hours’ in a tunnel under the Bridewell before being forced to sign a statement written by a Garda. ‘I was so traumatised that I considered hanging myself in the cell’. He was 24.

Convicted with no jury at the Special Criminal Court, Osgur was sentenced to 12 years prison. He was released after a year and half, including two months in solitary confinement. Grainy footage from RTE’s archives shows him walking from the courthouse, his conviction quashed because it was deemed illegal in the first place.

Despite years of trying, Osgur got no explanation for what happened. A civil action against many Gardai was settled in 1993. But the Irish State, he argues, is obliged to hold an independent inquiry; Ireland is a signatory to the UN Convention on Human Rights, and European law bans torture. More than this, Osgur wants to find out, not just why those Gardai behaved as they did, but “whether and how the whole affair was as a result of directions and attitudes emanating from the highest offices of state”. He wants, in other words, the State to investigate itself by instigating a statutory independent inquiry under internationally accepted terms. No small ask.

Whistleblowing research shows there are two kinds of disclosure that attract the most reprisal: disclosures made in public, and claims about deep-seated systemic wrongdoing that goes right to the top of an organization. Osgur’s whistleblowing is both.

This kind of whistleblowing is a real problem for the organization: embarrassing for the leaders, and complex to deal with. Few quick fixes, no easy way to scapegoat a ‘bad apple’ and close the case. States do not take kindly to such revelations. Just look at UK government whistleblowersKatharine Gun and Craig Murray, or their US counterparts Daniel Ellsberg and Ernie Fitzgerald. When system-wide and public claims are made against state organizations, we tend to see the most energetic attempts to quash.

What we don’t often expect, however, is complete and utter non-response. But looking more closely, big silence is a powerful tactic.

Time gets weaponized. It costs money to campaign, and it costs a lot of money to sustain a campaign over time. Time drags on; the whistleblower watches their savings deplete, while friends and family are called in to help. Big silence causes stress, extending existing stress. The kind of mundane yet devastating stress that comes with utter uncertainty about an outcome that should be a no-brainer. Osgur’s requests, he notes, yielded no inquiry and little engagement; “I can’t psychologically deal with that. Not just me, but no human being can until the issue is resolved”, he told RTE. He had suffered a nervous breakdown, “My health deteriorated and deteriorated over the years.”

For the whistleblower, the stress of big silence is all-encompassing. For the organization, not so much. This being just one small drama in the many concerns of a large and complex bureaucracy. Time can be an effective tool for use against an unwanted critic.

The European Union allowed for this. Its 2021 Whistleblowing Directive demands employers respond immediately, and repeatedly, to workers coming forward with disclosures. Non-response is a recognized violation.

“I think personally that the cover-up is, in fact, worse than what happened to us in 1976”, Osgur reflected during the RTE interview.

Prior to the segment, RTE had asked the Department of Justice for a statement. “This petition is receiving attention, and a reply will issue in due course”, read the presenter. “Once the matter is fully considered…” More big silence?

What we know from research is that partners and allies are critical, if whistleblowers are to stand any chance of prevailing. Ideally, partners from respected corners of the law, journalism, and rights advocacy. Osgur’s claims are echoed by Amnesty International, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Pat Finucane Centre, the Association for Legal Justice and Fair Trials International and countless supporters producing press conferences, public meetings, leaflets, podcasts and posters.

They were covered in The Irish Times, the Examiner, and others.

A recent RTE documentary, Crimes and Confessions stressed the big-picture significance of Osgur’s demands; it is one part of a bigger story of garda mistreatment of suspects and criminal justice system failures at the time, with others including the Kerry Babies case.

Perhaps, however, Osgur should just walk away? It is a new era. A forward-looking Ireland; those responsible are long gone. Yet, as his supporters argue: ghosts don’t go away. Organizations are shaped by the things they deny, repress and punish. As Professor C. Fred Alford reminds us in Broken Lives, his book about whistleblowers, we can see the true nature of an organization through how it deals with dissenters. And the main reason workers decide to stay silent in the face of wrongdoing? Fear that nothing will be done if they speak out. Cases like this risk closing down dissent.

This is why so many supporters of Osgur say the same thing: to trust our institutions, we need them to face up to the past.

Big silence is the unfair advantage of big organizations. Those who persist in challenging it are rare indeed.

**This article was first published at Parrhesia Inc's website, January 2025