Dismissal unfair, says tribunal employee

A FORMER secretary to the Employment Appeals Tribunal continued to receive her salary even though she said she was “effectively unemployed” for five years from late 2003.

Frances Carew, who claims she was unfairly dismissed, was appearing at a hearing of the Employment Appeals Tribunal yesterday.

After she was removed from the payroll in 2008, Ms Carew alleged she had also missed out on allowances and increments relating to the period and contacted former ministers Brian Lenihan, John Gormley and Michael Kitt about the issue. She also sought the intervention of junior minister Billy Kelleher and tánaiste Mary Coughlan.

Ms Carew, Lansdowne Village, Dublin, said her difficulties began when she made complaints about the administration of the labour inspectorate division of the Department of Trade and Enterprise where she was employed as a labour inspector, in 2001.

In 2003, she was moved to a position as a secretary to the Employment Appeals Tribunal, which was also under the auspices of the department.

Ms Carew told the tribunal yesterday that she had expected to be very much a “travelling” secretary. She said travel was seen as something of a perk, in which mileage allowances and subsistence could be claimed. She said she was particularly drawn to Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, due to a fondness for the southwest. She expressed a preference for longer trips. She said superiors in her new section wanted to retain these perks for themselves and she was frequently assigned to places such as Co Louth.

She also had difficulties being assigned a desk under an “open ceiling” and was worried about asbestos. She said as relations with colleagues worsened she was subjected to a campaign of “bullying, harassment and intimidation”.

Chocolate had been smeared on her keyboard, her e-mails and confidential post opened, and she had been “blocked out” from her computer. She said her workplace became “intolerable” and she had no work to do. She would leave to get a newspaper, a coffee or “wander about” sitting in on hearings. “I used to go to the National Gallery but I knew someone was stalking me,” she said.

Following a hearing in 2004, it was recommended that she return to the department’s labour inspectorate section, but she refused to provide a “reconciliation” statement accounting for her hours. She said she was “effectively unemployed” until 2007 when the department reassigned her to the National Employment Rights Authority.

She was removed from the payroll in November 2008 and ultimately dismissed in 2009. Tribunal chairwoman Niamh O’Carroll Kelly said a decision would be issued in due course.