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The Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s (RNLI) former top manager in Ireland says staff at its UK headquarters regard Ireland with “ignorance” and “contempt” and treated it as a “poor relation” during his tenure.
Seán Dillon told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Friday that the RNLI was a “governance basket case” and cited a lack of compliance with maritime regulations and certain “safeguarding” issues. He said at times kit was not being issued and training was running out – leaving some volunteers putting to sea with out-of-date qualifications.
Mr Dillon also said that Irish donors would hand over cheques with a view to them going to Irish lifeboat stations, but they would instead be sent to the UK and “go into an account forever”.
Mr Dillon was speaking at a hearing into his statutory complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against the maritime rescue charity at the WRC on Friday.
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He maintains he was unfairly selected for redundancy from his position as country manager and denied an interview for the new head of region role replacing it – before a senior manager at RNLI headquarters who was also facing redundancy got the job.
The RNLI sent no representative to a hearing at Lansdowne House in Dublin 4 this afternoon – with the case finally heard in the charity’s absence after Mr Dillon and an adjudicator waited an hour in case they had been delayed en route from the UK.
Mr Dillon, a former Army captain who went on to have a career in the private and non-profit sector, said that although his job title when he joined the RNLI in January 2018 stated he was “lifesaving manager” he was in effect the senior national manager “held to account for anything in Ireland or which went wrong in Ireland”.
He said a new chief executive appointed to the charity in 2019, Mark Dowie, had made it clear that he believed the organisation’s central headquarters at Poole in Dorset, on the south coast of Britain, had become “fat” and that his goal was to “make the centre lean and push activities out to the region”.
He said there was “an accumulation of complaints” from lifeboat crews and other volunteers, with kit not being issued and training running out – leaving some volunteers putting to sea with out-of-date qualifications.
He said Ireland, in particular, was the “poor relation” in this regard.
“It was a governance basket case,” he said, citing a lack of compliance with maritime regulations and certain “safeguarding” issues.
The complainant said Mr Dowie told him directly: “Things are so bad even if you’re not doing your job I don’t even know enough to sack you.”
“He [Mr Dowie] said: ‘Right Seán, I want you to get it done.’ He [Mr Dowie] felt the bottleneck to getting things done was in Poole and he wanted that tidied up,” Mr Dillon said.
Mr Dillon said he and his counterparts in the other five RNLI regions – Scotland, Wales and three subdivisions of England – were put to work by Mr Dowie on drawing up a decentralisation strategy that would see the Poole base changed “from headquarters to a ‘support centre’ – making the regional commands “autonomous but not independent”.
“It’s a maritime organisation, a lot of Royal Navy, CBEs, KBEs – trying to assign a role for Ireland was quite difficult,” he said.
He believed early on that the organisation was aiming to have more “strategic” management in the regional areas which was fulfilled in his “lifesaving manager” job title – more a “general manager” than the historic structure with its “ex-navy” influence.
“This is asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. We had people above us who’d be impacted by this,” he said of the HQ staff in Poole, and added that Mr Dowie got “quite a pushback” from the charity’s directors.
He said the programme was delayed by the impact of Covid-19 and did not progress until early 2021.
Mr Dillon said that although his job title had not changed at this point, it had already been made clear to staff in Poole “that if anything is going on the regions” they would have to deal with one of the regional managers.
There was precedent in the organisation for a person to simply assume the position in the event of a role change or title change – but that at that point the six regional managers starting to hear references being made by staff in headquarters of a “right to title”.
He said there was particular resistance to the devolution of fundraising activities to the regions from Poole and that he believed “transparency” over what was happening to funds raised in Ireland was required.
“People would be going into Dún Laoghaire with a cheque with a view to it going to Dún Laoghaire station. They [cheques] go over there and go into an account forever,” he said.
“I didn’t want to be in trouble with the Charities Regulator. I didn’t want volunteers being uncertain about where funds are going,” he added.
He said that during his tenure, he had stopped fundraising material going out to Irish households with the British monarch’s picture and the pound sterling symbol.
The tribunal was told Mr Dillon and the five regional managers were put on notice that their jobs were at risk of redundancy early in September 2021.
He said he was told during redundancy consultations that new head of region positions were more senior – but that there were no significant differences between the job description from which he was being made redundant and the new positions.
As discussions on his redundancy continued, an external executive recruitment firm in London was given the job of hiring for the new regional manager roles in November, he said.
“Some HQ roles were also made redundant, so you’d have those people looking to slot into new regional roles. If you were in Poole there was enough opportunity to be looked after or moved sideways,” he said.
He said alternative roles were “absolutely categorically” not proposed to him.
“That’s why I got angry,” he said.
He said on 2nd November he was notified his role would be made redundant and that he would not be interviewed for the regional position in Ireland. He said the new head of region job went to an employee based at Poole also at risk of redundancy as a suitable alternative for her.
“They scored her on the basis of location because she is Irish and she was of a ‘head of’ title,” Mr Dillon said.
He said he did not believe there had been any adequate consideration of suitable alternative work for him and that his qualifications were not considered thoroughly by the RNLI’s HR team.
“I felt there was a lot of shenanigans going on at that point,” he said. “Their experience is in fundraising and policy,” he said of the successful candidate for the Irish regional head job. “I’m over here doing the role and my qualifications are superior,” he added.
His redundancy was upheld on appeal to the head of the RNLI’s legal department, whom he said would have had to “cast aspersions on her own department” if she made a finding of fact in his favour.
Mr Dillon said that he had taken up a temporary contract with another non-profit organisation, Family Carers Ireland, as soon as he was made redundant from the €83,000-a-year job position with the RNLI – a salary he said was more than his current one, but “not by much”.
The main difference was the loss of a 15 per cent employer contribution to his pension and the fact that his new role was temporary.
“The consequence of that is that I was turned down for a mortgage yesterday,” he said. “I had a certain career in mind as a country manager for Ireland that I thought I would be in for some time. Obviously there are no guarantees in life but that’s the consequence of what’s happened.
The adjudicating officer, Eileen Campbell, had waited for an hour after the hearing’s scheduled start time this morning before she began. This was more than the usual 15 to 30 minutes’ grace usually afforded to parties attending WRC adjudication hearings to allow for travel delays on the basis that RNLI representatives might have been coming from Britain.
The adjudicator opened the hearing at 12.30pm with only the complainant and a member of the press present, having satisfied herself that the charity was on notice in inquiries with the WRC case officer.
“It’s symbolic of the contempt, of the ignorance or contempt, towards Ireland as a region in the RNLI,” Mr Dillon said of the charity’s failure to appear in the matter. “I’m glad I got it off my chest. I’m finished, thank you very much,” he added.
Ms Campbell adjourned the hearing to consider her decision, which she said she would issue in due course.
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