 Good afternoon to all of you who are joining us today on this webinar and in Dublin and I hope that you are all keeping well and that you are enjoying the lovely weather that we are having at the moment. And we are very honored today to have an incredible speaker with us talking about a topic that is quite new to most of us we haven't really had much experience of it. I want to just give some housekeeping rules first. And please, if you want to send in questions you can do it using the Q&A button on your computer during the talk or after the talk. And the questions and answers and the speech is all on the record. You can also use you can tweet or is it X something on the on the X by at I. And we will ask you if you're sending in a question or a comment, would you please at least give your name and if you're part of an association or a group, it would be good if you could tell us that as well. And our topic today is whistleblowing, and it's a relatively new concept, and up to the 70s we really didn't know about it. And there was very little protection for people who decided to whistle blow. As you all know this means that somebody who realized something was going wrong in the company they were working with or the union, or the organization university that they went and made a complaint about those errors. And it remained fragmented is remained a curious, and it was very unequal in different countries and around the world as to how whistleblowers were dealt with in 2016 only the French parliament brought in legislation to define a whistleblower. And then in 2019, the whistleblower protection directive was passed by the EU institutions, and has been hailed as a global standard setter in the field. Doesn't mean that every country has brought their own legislation right up to date, but at least the directive is there now. Our speaker today is Maureen Carney. And in her speech she's going to discuss her experiences as a whistleblower. She'll tell us about the current state of whistleblowing protection in France and the EU, and the role of trade unions in which of which she was a longtime member. And Maureen is like us all were watching probably a native of Ireland native of Castle bar. She moved to Paris in 19 in the mid 1980s to work as a teacher in the nuclear industry for a subsidiary of what later would become known as a rave. She joined the trade union confédération français démocratique du travail CFD T in the 1990s after seeing her students threatened with redundancy and progressively becoming a leading trade union activists. In 2004, she was elected as the general secretary of the ARAVA European Worlds Council. In 2012, she then decided to become a blowing the whistle on a ravers plant technology transfers to China. She talked to us about that. And she had really terrible experiences as a whistleblower, where she was sexually abused, where she was threatened, where her family was threatened and terrible things happened to her. And she subsequently documented this in a book and a film called la syndical syndicalist released in English as the sitting duck, which literally she became when she whistle blew. This book was released in 2019 and 2023. Now Maureen will outline and discuss her experiences as a whistleblower. She talked to us as I say about the legal protections. And I really do want to welcome Maureen having having listened to her podcast some months ago, maybe a year ago. I was really struck by her courage, her resilience and her willingness to be somebody who would blow the whistle on wrongdoing major wrongdoing. So Maureen, I'm going to hand the floor over to you now. And after that, we will maybe have some questions and comments to make to you. Good afternoon to you. Good afternoon. I feel very honored today to be here. I'd be totally honest. I'm a bit nervous, but I do my best. So Maureen, can I just tell you there are really nice bunch of people who are listening and we're very gentle. We will try not to make you any more nervous. Okay, thank you very much. What can I say? I worked in a rave up in the middle of the 80s until 2015, where I was left the books. And when I was teaching as a teacher, some of my students started breaking down in class. You know, I couldn't believe it engineers and so I eventually got to the bottom of it. And they were being threatened with redundancy. And I thought this couldn't be possible in the way it was done. So I went to see the unions, read up on what, you know, could be done. So I went to see the unions. And they said to me instead of kind of shouting at us, why don't you join, which I did. So I did junior work. I always continued to teach and never I was never a permanent union person, because I felt was important to be on the ground with the people that you were representing as well. So in 2004, somebody said to me would you like to run as a candidate for the array by your European works council. And my first reaction as a woman was, no, I don't have the skills to do anything like that. I don't know anything about Europe besides what I read in the papers. So I was told what you just want as a candidate and we train you up and so on. So I ran as a candidate and I was elected by, I think it was 12 or 14 countries, I can't remember. It was to go to a French person, the general secretary, and the fact I was Irish living in France. The other nationalities were very happy about that. So we began working at a European level for years and years, things were really good. We did a lot of projects with the European Commission were financed by the European Commission on gender equality, insertion of differently able people in the workplace, forecasting needs and skills for the next five years within the nuclear industry in Europe, projects like that. In 2011, there was a change of CEO and the new CEO, obviously, I don't, I shouldn't say obviously, but he didn't, we didn't get on, let's say. So after about six months or a year, I went to the human resources manager and said, listen, I want to I want somebody else to take over for me. It's not good for the company. It's not good for the employees that I don't get on with the CEO. So that was taken on board and so on. And I was meant to officially leave the my mandate on the 31st of December 2012. And they asked me to stay on for another few months. So I said, okay. In 2011, it's quite complicated what I'm going to say. So I'm sorry. In 2011, November, December, I was sent a copy of a contract between EDF electricity, the France and CG and PC, which was a state run Chinese nuclear industry. And in this contract, there was a massive transfer of technology, but it was a ravers technology. It didn't belong to EDF. So I found this very, very strange. So I showed it to a few top engineers because I'm not an engineer. And I wanted to make sure that it was real and that I wasn't being led up the garden path. And they were totally shocked the engineers when they read it. So I went along to see some politicians that was quite close to a lot of politicians because we work very well together on the nuclear industry. So they were, it was two members of the Socialist Party, Jean-Marc Iro and Bernard Casnop. And both of them became prime ministers then afterwards in the socialist government. So they wrote to the then Prime Minister, François Fillon, and said, what is this all about? It's unacceptable. And so the contract was stopped. The Socialists got into power in, I can't remember, May, June 2012. And Bernard Casnop, who was then Minister of European Affairs, called me and said, listen, I've got to see you. It's urgent. So I went along to see him with the head of my union. I never went to see a politician of my own, just in case I got something wrong. And there was always two of us. And there we were told that EDF had continued on with the negotiations. That there was another contract out there and that for ARAVA it was going to be disastrous from a civil affair, know-how point of view, from a work point of view, we would lose lots of jobs. And our core, the heart of our industry was being transferred. And as I said before, it didn't belong to EDF. So I went looking for the contract. Again, got a copy in the post. It showed it to a lot of, again, engineers who I knew, whom I was close to. Again, they couldn't believe it, what was written into it. So I went to our CEO. He denied everything. He said there was no contract. You know, I was talking, excuse BS, that I didn't know what I was on about. Anyway, I was only an English teacher. So I decided with the European Works Council, we worked very, very well together, all the different nationalities. So we sent off about 300, 400 letters to the different MPs, to the Senate, saying we wanted to meet and we wanted to know what they were going to do about this contract. So all in all, we met about 40 MPs and several ministers and they all told us there was no contract and that the government wouldn't allow a contract. So we were very, very confused at the time. And then I got a photo, it was in October, November 2012, of the signature of the contract where you had the CEO of EDF, the CEO of ARAVA, the CEO of the Chinese company and a couple of vice presidents of EDF and ARAVA in the photo, but no politicians. And when you sign a contract like that with France, you always have politicians in the photo. So then we started sending the photo off and I had ministers, assistants calling me up saying, we knew nothing about it, we didn't know, it's not true, it couldn't be possible. So this went on and on and on for a month, month and a half. And the CEO, he called me several times, wrote down the phone, shouted at me, made me come to his office, told me I was crazy and he was much stronger than me, that he knew people. And I kept trying to get the, at the time I remember, I kept trying to get the discussion back on to the employees and the know-how. And he was very, very personal with me, very negative. So I left that meeting, I remember, it wasn't long before the, I was attacked. Four or five days before the attack, I had been to see a lawyer who came to see the whole of the European Works Council and we've all voted unanimously to bring the CEO to court. So I don't know on the Thursday or the Friday was attacked on the Monday the 17th. On the Thursday or Friday, he got the letter and blew his top, which I knew he would. On the Saturday, two days before the attack, I contacted two ministers and I said, you know, this is crazy. What's going on in the company? Can I meet with you? And so one of the ministers who later became Prime Minister said, of course, no problem. Give me a call on Monday and we meet then. And I was attacked on the Monday. It was very early in the morning. I used to leave for work at about seven, half past seven. My husband used to leave at six. And I was in the house on my own. We never locked the doors. And somebody came in and attacked me, tortured me, raped me and left me tied up to a chair. And so hours later, my cleaning lady came and I was in total state of shock. And so she untied me. I didn't want her to call the police because the person that said to me it's your second morning. There won't be a third. And I was thinking of my children, my grandchildren. So I wanted her to bring my husband and I couldn't remember my husband's phone number. Took me 15 minutes to get her right. And he said to her immediately call the police. So the police were called. I was taken into hospital. I was examined intimately that evening by a doctor without any sort of permission. And over the next two or three days, I was examined intimately four times. And that once was I asked for my permission. So that was awful. It was terrible. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I couldn't do anything. I was in a state of constant alert. Scared. Scared for the family. Scared for myself. And then a few weeks later I was arrested. And I was taken into the police station. And they told me they didn't believe a word I said that I was crazy. That I had made the whole thing up. Things like this didn't happen in France. And that they had information that I was totally unstable. So I couldn't talk again. I couldn't answer their questions correctly. But they kept putting pressure on me to say I had made it up and I refused. I couldn't do that. There was one thing in our family at home. We didn't lie ever, ever. I was considered an awful thing to lie. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't make something up. But after about 10 or 11 hours of being arrested. I was left to when they, when they saw that there was no way I was going to make a story up. They left me on my own in a room. And this guy whom I'd never seen before came in. And he said to me, I don't like people like you. Unless you say you made everything up. You and your family will never get over this. And we make sure of that. So he left. And I was shaking by this time. I didn't know what to do. So they came back in. And I said, I made it all up. So then they asked me how I made it all up. And I wasn't able to invent a story there and then. So it didn't make any sense. What I said whatsoever. The so-called confession. And then a few weeks later. In France, you have a preliminary hearing with judges. There were four judges appointed to the preliminary hearing. I only saw one. Never saw the others. And five years later, I was taken to court. And in court. The judge was a woman. Was absolutely horrible to me. She was more dignitary, totally humiliation. So I was convicted. And the things I was convicted on were. They only found three traces of DNA. My husband's on the cleaning lady. My fingerprints were supposedly found on the tape. The sound of the television. I said the television was very loud. The cleaning lady when she came in, I'd been there for hours. So it was normal sound. So it was obviously lying. And the other thing that they really went to turn on. Was I wasn't wearing panties under my tights. And any respectful woman. Would wear panties under her tights. So that was in 2017. So I was really completely broken. I didn't know what to do. And, but I couldn't give up. There was no way I could give up. So I decided to appeal. I changed lawyers. And I was very, very lucky. Because I got one of the top lawyers in France. He was voted the best lawyer by the American Bar Association in Europe. And he said, give me the file. I'll go through it. So himself and another. I mean, they went through the whole file. There was no DNA whatsoever. They'd made it up. My fingerprints were never found on the tape. That tied me up. The appeals court said the inquiry was. Beyond ridiculous. There was no confession. It was quite obvious the confession was coerced. And I was acquitted. And the. You don't get the results immediately. So it was six or eight weeks later. And I was at home here. My husband and lots of friends were here. My daughter was here. And we were waiting for the phone call from my lawyer. To say whether I had been acquitted. So I went down to the court. As it's called. And I was acquitted. And everybody started jumping for joy. And I looked at them and I said, I'm destroyed. I've been saying this for the past six years. And we're all jumping for joy today. Because the truth has come out. But from then onwards, I really started to. Build myself up. I worked with a lot of therapy. I met a wonderful military psychiatrist. Who's a specialist in trauma post traumatic stress syndrome. And I worked with him for a year. And he really got me back together again. And it wasn't me actually who wrote the book. There was a journalist from. Magazine called ups. Business magazine in France. So that came out in 2019. And everything that was in that book. It was so lovely. It was so nice. I couldn't believe it. Because the police joined the arrest told me I was hopeless at my job. That everybody said I was hopeless at my job. That I was unstable. I was this. I was that. And that's somewhere. I was so confused. I was so. In such a traumatic state. That these little things kind of went into my head. And so maybe I was awful for the past 20 years. Maybe I didn't. Wasn't as good as I thought I was. And thanks to the therapy. Little by little. The confidence started to come back. The myself esteem started to come back. My lawyer actually did something that was really great. He asked my 10 years of my annual. My 10 years of my interviews. To see if I was supposedly so unstable, so crazy. I had done more than my objectives. In the 10 years leading up to the attack. I was considered an excellent member of staff. Very truthful, very lot of integrity. To actually get those 10 years of annual reports. That's what the police had said to me. And what the first trial had said to me. Wasn't true. That brought me up. Really, really brought me up. And from, I'd say 2019 onwards. I just started coming back to myself. And like people who know me today. And who have known me for, let's say 30, 40, 50 years. Are saying to your back. You're back to the morning that we used to know. So, so that's brilliant. So the movie was another thing. I mean, I never expected. I still can hardly believe it. That there was a book and there was a movie about the whole thing. So I have lots of whistleblowers who actually contact me now. Most of them from France, a few from Ireland, actually. And then some from over Europe. And the problem is there is a law. It's there. But how does anybody know if it's applied correctly in the different countries? Only 10 countries have ratified the European whistleblower, including France. But the problem in France is we also have another law called. So great that there, which is states. Business secrets. You cannot go to the press. If you find out there's something wrong in your company. If it brings out publicly. Business secret. So I've been trying to find out how these two work together. And some of the specialists like lawyers and different people I've spoken to said they don't know how it's going to work. Because both are there. The secret or the business secret thing can always be applied. So it can stop people from talking. So I don't know what's going to happen with this. I'd also like to say so I completely forgot something that's extremely important. I was totally supported by my family. All of my friends. My union was there from beginning to end. Over 400 of the staff or to me. And said they were behind me. They had no doubt I was attacked. So all of that, that support was so important. It was. I don't know what I would have gotten through or not. Because the majority of whistleblowers that I know today are broken. Totally broken. And I have to say this. After having gone through what I went through. I couldn't say to anybody. Go ahead. Do it. Okay. If you want to lose five, 10 years of your life. If you can be called a liar on stable. You know, you can't ask somebody to do that. I never, I never knew I was obviously blower. I just thought I was doing my job as general secretary of the European works council. For the different countries I work for. So. Whistleblowers don't calculate. There's no calculation. In what we do. It's it comes from its integrity. You see something that's corrupt. You can't let it go. But I know I couldn't anyway. And that was the way I was brought up. My mom, for example, I also have to tell the story about my mom. My mom was a Nelson Mandela. Fan. And I remember in the 60s when he was put into jail. That she bought poor kids. We all had to wear these three Nelson Mandela. We were in Castle Barker and to Mayo. I had never seen a black person in my life. I was wearing a big, big afro hairstyle. Was put onto our school uniform coats. Every time you change coats. We had to put the badge onto a new one. And a couple of times I'd be coming back from school. And I'd see my mom sitting outside a shop. Who was trading with South Africa. With her friends. And I would die of embarrassment. In front of my girlfriends. So, you know, it was in the family. And when he was released. In the 90s, in the beginning of the 90s, she ran me. And she said, look, he's been released. And she said to me, more things take time. Never give up. And, you know, the way I just kept going. Was thanks to my Irishness. Thanks to our history, the history of Ireland. That we always, no matter how many times we were beaten. We went out again and we fought for our independence. It maybe took 800 years, but we got there. And that's, that's really huge impact on me. And I think that's about it. I don't know whether there's anything else.