More whistleblowers destroyed in the gardai for exposing corruption, WRC exposes. Full Media blackout on it?

Full-on Media silence and cover-up, by RTE etc ? 

When whistleblowers appeared at the WRC on Friday the 8th of December 2023, after they made complaints about how they were destroyed in the gardai after exposing corruption and fraud by Senior Gardai

by Stephen Bourke 

A civilian analyst who exposed errors in Garda homicide data has accused the force of penalising her for making disclosures to the Oireachtas – and wants government ministers who “failed to fulfil” assurances to her after she went public held to account. 

A barrister acting for Lois West, the former deputy head of the Garda Analytics Service, told the Workplace Relations Commission today that his client had suffered “continuing penalisation” since bringing the statistical deficiencies to public attention in 2018, including alleged sexual harassment by a superior. 

She has brought parallel statutory complaints against the Commissioner of An Garda Siochána, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, and the government under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 and the Health, Safety and Welfare at Work Act 2005 – along with a claim under the Payment of Wages Act. It has previously been reported that arising from the work of Ms West, it emerged that cases had been misclassified and that expertise for some investigations was not available. 

Other issues were identified including problems with record-keeping and the taking of witness statements. At a preliminary hearing today, David Byrnes BL said Ms West had gone from earning a €98,000-a-year salary to “no income” because she had been forced to take sick leave in December 2020 “as a result of what we say is the wrongdoing in this matter”. Mr Byrnes, appearing instructed by Felix McTiernan of Noble Law Solicitors, said he had “significant medical evidence” to lay before the tribunal and that he was prepared to call his client’s consultant psychiatrist to give evidence on the impact of work related stress on Ms West’s health. 

No specific allegations were made against any ministers or former ministers at a preliminary hearing. However, Mr Byrnes said his client’s case was that as a civilian employee of An Garda Siochána, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform held ultimate responsibility for Ms West’s conditions of employment as a “civil servant of the government”. 

The claim against the government, which was addressed to the Department of An Taoiseach, was on the basis of collective ministerial responsibility, he said. Niall Fahy BL said he was “formally instructed” in the matter by the Minister for Public Expenditure and An Garda Siochána and said the force was “willing to meet this claim head-on and accept that it is the employer”. 

Mr Byrnes said there was a “chain of events that interconnect” linking acts of penalisation alleged in Ms West’s complaints back to his client’s work on the review of homicides in 2016 and 2017, where she and a colleague had identified “41 cases where a red flag had gone up”. “Government ministers have had involvement in it, they were aware of the situation; they have made representations that what happened to my client was remarkable and needs to be dealt with. Assurances were given that they would deal with matters. We wouldn’t be here today if those representations had been honoured,” Mr Byrnes said. 

“Unfortunately, these ministers sought to sit back, make popular political statements that were the right statements to make, and then failed to fulfil them. I’m simply not prepared to accept the buck simply stops with the Commissioner,” he added.  Mr Fahy, who appeared instructed by the Chief State Solicitor’s Office, said the WRC “is not the appropriate forum to hold ministers to account” and that the approach being taken by Mr Byrnes was a “pretext for criticising certain members of the government, or the departments”.

He accused the complainant side of “trying to shoehorn that into an employment relationship to give it a veneer of respectability”. Mr Byrnes said that since there was “no-one here for the government”, his client’s statutory complaint naming the Department of An Taoiseach could not be struck out. Adjudicator Roger McGrath said that if any one of the three State parties thought it was not the correct respondent it could “make that case on the day” of the hearing, saying he would not require written legal submissions on the point. Mr Byrnes also said An Garda Siochána had failed to comply with a data subject access request by his client seeking personal data including her personnel file, and sought that the WRC give a direction to the respondent for the production of the file and other material. 

These included records on his client’s involvement in the review of homicides; her complaint about sexual harassment and a review of the handling of that complaint by Garda management, along with all communications between the force and the Policing Authority on his client, as well as material from the Garda occupational health department. Mr Fahy sought an extended deadline for the production of documents. He said it would take “a significant amount of time to make a decision as to what we’ll claim privilege on”.

Mr McGrath asked Mr Byrnes to provide a list of documents for production, and has given the parties until mid-February 2024 to exchange legal submissions.

https://www.thesun.ie/news/2290575/two-garda-analysts-who-allege-they-were-belittled-when-they-questioned-errors-in-homicide-figures-deserve-an-independent-probe-says-labour-td-alan-kelly/

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/garda-civilian-analysts-belittled-and-treated-poorly-over-homicide-figures-1.3418017

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/bullying-in-garda-is-endemic-and-it-starts-in-templemore-sergeant-claims/35615116.html

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-20468592.html

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/garda-official-threatens-legal-action-qsvhq2blb