A former director of Inland Fisheries Ireland has said he had his 13-year-old son drive a State-owned tractor on public roads at night as he was not acting rationally due to the shock of being suspended from his job.
At the Workplace Relations Commission yesterday, Patrick Gorman's trade union, SIPTU, said that at the time he had just been "ambushed" with a series of anonymous allegations – none of which were upheld after investigation – and that a "campaign" against him had "succeeded".
The tribunal heard Mr Gorman had close to 40 years of service with the organisation.
In his complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against Inland Fisheries Ireland, Mr Gorman said his suspension became the talk of the town within hours and that his family had been "destroyed" by false rumours that he had been sacked for fraud.
The allegations of corruption made against him in the protected disclosure were not upheld by investigators appointed by IFI, the WRC heard, but the state agency maintains it was justified in dismissing him for the unauthorised use of a tractor and a boat while suspended pending investigation.
Mr Gorman said he was "completely oblivious" to an anonymous letter making allegations that he was making personal use of an an Inland Fisheries tractor until he arrived to meet his line manager at the agency’s hatchery on the Galway-Mayo border at Cong.
To his surprise, the IFI’s chief executive Francis O’Donnell was there too and told him: "We’ve received a protected disclosure, an anonymous letter. It’s about you," Mr Gorman said.
The CEO then told him he was suspended and gave him a letter to that effect, he said.
'I was in bits'
"To be completely honest with you, my mind went into a mush after that," he said.
"I don't remember exactly what was said. There was a letter of suspension, I know that much."
Mr Gorman told the WRC that the IFI tractor was 25 years old and had only been kept in service for its seasonal work for so long because he had housed it for the agency’s use for years at his home.
Mr O’Donnell said: "We need the tractor back," Mr Gorman said. "I asked when – they said 'tonight’," the complainant added.
"I was shaking. I was in bits," said Mr Gorman said.
Mr Gorman said that he drove home from the meeting to find a local landowner waiting to report suspicious boat activity on Lough Mask, and developed a suspicion that eel poachers might be at work before going out again to deliver the tractor.
"I started the tractor. I knew [my son] was a capable, and very, very capable tractor driver," Mr Gorman said, adding that the boy was "13 going on 14".
"It has haunted me. I got him to drive the tractor behind me to Cong," Mr Gorman said.
"I told him to drive the tractor behind me to Cong, very, very slowly, with the hazard lights on. He did everything I asked him."
The complainant said he was not acting rationally because of the shock of the suspension, and resorted to having his son drive the tractor as he had been instructed not to contact other IFI staff, including his nephew and brother, who lived locally.
"In hindsight, I wouldn’t have put my son doing it," he added.
Mr Gorman and his son then brought a four-metre rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) belonging to Inland Fisheries from the hatchery to his home, which he then took out alone on Lough Mask the following morning to investigate his suspicions about potential eel poaching, he said.
Although none of the allegations made against Mr Gorman in the anonymous letter were upheld, the movements of the tractor and the boat after his suspension were also examined in the investigation and disciplinary process which followed, and taken as cause to dismiss him with eight weeks’ notice.
The dismissal was upheld on appeal in October 2022, the end of 37-and-a-half years’ service by Mr Gorman in Inland Fisheries and its predecessor organisation, the Western Regional Fisheries Board, where he started as a temporary fisheries officer after his Leaving Cert in 1985, the tribunal heard.
'Major breach of health and safety'
IFI operations director Barry Fox, one of the appeal officers, said Mr Gorman had committed "a major breach of health and safety" by taking the RHIB out on Lough Mask alone on 2 February, but that alone would not have been cause for dismissal.
However, he said the use of the tractor by a 13-year-old on the public road had gone beyond a breach of internal health and safety rules and was the more serious matter as a breach of road traffic legislation.
Under cross-examination, Mr Gorman accepted that some sanction was appropriate for the incidents, but that he believed dismissal with notice had been "disproportionate".
"I wasn’t thinking straight," he said.
In a closing submission, counsel for Inland Fisheries Ireland, Tiernan Lowey BL, appearing instructed by Byrne Wallace solicitors said the dismissal was not unfair and the IFI was resisting reinstatement as a possible remedy in the event of the WRC making a finding to the contrary.
"It is to stretch the bounds of probability to suggest Mr Gorman acted in a strained, irrational way for [that] period of time," he said.
"It's hard to think of a more serious matter than permitting an underage person to drive a tractor on a public highway at night time, presumably when it was dark in February at 8 o’clock," Mr Lowey added.
Marie O’Connor of the SIPTU Workers’ Rights Centre said IFI had breached its procedures when its CEO went beyond the "initial assessment" set out in its protected disclosures policy and questioned Mr Gorman on the tractor.
"This felt like a witch hunt – we all know protected disclosures can be used as a weapon," she said.
"He’s held his hands up to say he did act in a totally irrational manner on those dates… [but] two days don’t define the man.
"He felt he was going to be taken down one way or the other," Ms O’Connor said.
"He was dismissed over an error of judgment following a campaign against him and his family. It’s abundantly clear that has succeeded."
Addressing adjudicator David James Murphy, Ms O’Connor said: "Everyone through the community and IFI thinks Mr Gorman was dismissed for, you said yourself, corruption.
"That should be part of the consideration."
Mr Murphy closed the hearing said he would give his decision in writing to the parties in due course.
