The Speak Up Helpline offers free information and referral advice to people looking to report wrongdoing, or to witnesses and victims of corruption or other wrongdoing . It is operated by trained staff and volunteers.
You can contact us in the following ways:
- Contacting the Helpline by Freephone or Signal messaging app
- Contacting the Helpline by Secure Online Report Form
- Contacting the Helpline by email
- Contacting the Helpline by post
Don’t worry if you wish to contact us but do not speak much English. We are pleased to be able to offer our services in the following languages; Arabic Polish, Romanian, Brazilian Portuguese, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. Interpretation or translation services can be arranged for any communications with our Speak Up Helpline and the Transparency Legal Advice Centre.
If you are from a migrant background, reporting wrongdoing will not affect your immigration status or application, or your permission to work in Ireland. If you need advice about your immigration status and employment rights, the Helpline can refer you to other organisations that can help.
Contacting the Helpline by Freephone
You can contact our Speak Up team on Freephone 1800 844 866 (+353 1 554 3965 from outside of Ireland), or through using the encrypted messaging app Signal: Please note that only Signal-encrypted messages will be responded to.
Bear in mind when calling:
- Our office hours are 10am to 6pm, Monday to Friday
- We are closed on public holidays. The Helpline will be closed for the holidays from Friday 23 December to Thursday 5 January.
- You can leave a voicemail message if we are unable to answer when you call. A call back from the service team members will appear on your phone without caller ID.
- No telephone conversation can be encrypted or guaranteed to be 100% fully secure
- You do not have to give us your name or contact details
(however we will need some contact details if we are to follow up on your initial call) - Any details you provide will be treated in strict confidence
When you call us, you will be provided with guidelines. In particular, you will be asked not to identify any person related to your concern. General information is enough. This is to avoid compromising yourself or our organisation and in order to comply with our legal obligations.
Contacting the Helpline by Secure Online Report Form
If you prefer, you can also contact us confidentially or anonymously using our new secure report channel.
You are advised to visit the site using the desktop app, Tor Browser which protects your identity online. However, please do not download Tor Browser at work. After submitting your report, you will be given a 16-digit code. You will need to keep this code to log into the reporting channel and view messages from the Helpline.
You can also contact the Helpline securely by using the Hushmail contact form below. If you are concerned about your anonymity, we would recommend using the secure report form above however.
Contacting the Helpline by email
You can contact the Helpline by email at helpline@transparency.ie, or via encrypted email to trachelpdesk@hushmail.com. Please note that you should consider using an encrypted email client such as Hushmail or Protonmail to communicate securely with the Helpline. Please do not send us any documentation in the first instance. If needed, we will ask you to provide us with copies in due course.
Contacting the Helpline by post
You can contact the Helpline by post by writing to Transparency International Ireland, Floor 3, 69 Middle Abbey, Dublin 1, D01 P5Y4.
DO
- Think carefully about the information you give us. Provide your first name only (or a pseudonym) and do not identify any person, place, product, workplace or organisation related to your concern.
- Make sure that the computer you use to send us emails is free of malware and spyware - particularly keystroke logging malware. Update and upgrade your antivirus protection software
- Consider using our secure Hushform to contact the helpline. Emails sent using this form are encrypted end-to-end. Please note that subsequent emails sent from email accounts without PGP encryption activated may not be encrypted. If you would like to ensure that your correspondence with the helpline is secure, then we would recommend that you set up your own hushmail account before contacting the helpline. You can set up a free hushmail email account here
DON'T
- Call from your office or home landline. Also avoid calling from a bill-pay phone – a pay as you go mobile is best
- Tell anyone else that you are considering reporting a concern, unless a legal professional advises you that it is safe to do so
- Use a government or work computer to contact the Speak Up Helpline – many employers reserve the right to monitor employees’ internet use, and this may identify you inadvertently
- Use public computers to contact the Helpline, as they could be infected by dangerous malware or spyware
- Use unsecured public Wi-Fi when attempting to contact the Helpline, as this may be compromised
- Make a copy of your correspondence with us on your home or work computer
Privacy
In order to provide our services to you, we need to process certain personal data that you provide to us.
We will process your personal data in order to provide you with our services, to assess your call to the Speak Up Helpline and to help identify what type of assistance we can provide to you. We use statistics and general information from all the calls we receive to monitor patterns in corruption and wrongdoing, produce reports and formulate recommendations to policy-makers as appropriate.
For more information about the Speak Up Helpline’s privacy policy, please click here.