The chief executive of the State fisheries agency has been criticised by the Workplace Relations Commission for attempting to "surreptitiously" influence a disciplinary process that led to the unfair sacking of a director for having his 13-year-old son drive a government-owned tractor on a public road at night.
The tribunal has ruled that Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) treated former director Patrick Gorman unfairly from the moment he was suspended on foot of allegations in an anonymous letter - and that it went too far in later sacking him when suspension or demotion might have been more appropriate sanctions.
In its decision, the WRC also said the organisation's CEO Francis O’Donnell "left large gaps" in IFI's defence of Mr Gorman’s Unfair Dismissals Act complaint by not attending to give evidence to the tribunal in July this year.
Mr Gorman's trade union, Siptu, said he was not acting rationally due to the shock of being suspended from his job after being "ambushed" with the anonymous allegations and that a "campaign" against him had "succeeded".
Mr Gorman said his suspension became the talk of the town within hours and that his family had been "destroyed" by false rumours on the "bush telegraph" in Cong, Co Mayo, alleging that he had been sacked for fraud.
The WRC has now upheld Mr Gorman’s complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act, awarding him €38,500 in compensation, but rejecting his bid to get his job back.
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 at 4pm on 1 February 2022.
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.
"To be completely honest with you, my mind went into a mush after that. I don’t remember exactly what was said. There was a letter of suspension, I know that much," he said.
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.
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 he 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. 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," Mr Gorman said. "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 RHIB 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.
He said that although the initial allegations made against him in the protected disclosure had not been upheld, "the gossip and the bush telegraph had gone into full flight" in Cong and it was presumed the claims were the cause of his dismissal.
He said his children had to listen to locals referring to "the fraud that Gorman was involved in with credit cards and cards for fuel - that I used IFI fuel cards to fill machinery and put them out on hire".
His trade union rep, Marie O’Connor, said Mr Gorman was sacked for an "error of judgment following a campaign against him and his family".
"It’s abundantly clear that has succeeded," she added.
Tiernan Lowey BL, instructed by Byrne Wallace solicitors for IFI said: "It is to stretch the bounds of probability to suggest Mr Gorman acted in a strained, irrational way for [that] period of time."
"It's hard to think of a more serious matter than permitting an underage person to drive a tractor on a public highway at nighttime, presumably when it was dark in February at 8pm," Mr Lowey added.
In his decision, adjudicator David James Murphy said Mr Gorman's evidence on how the tractor ended up at his property was "convincing" and he was satisfied it was "not unusual" for staff to keep IFI equipment at home.
The adjudicator said the agency was entitled to "reset the boundaries" on managing its property - but that did not call for "retrospectively blaming employees who have been playing by the rules as they understood them".
He said that in that context, the "sudden" move to suspend Mr Gorman was "obviously punitive and unfair".
Agency bosses could have expected that word of the suspension would spread through Inland Fisheries and beyond into Mr Gorman's local community, given the agency's "well-developed gossip mill", he wrote - noting references in further anonymous letters to Mr Gorman as having been "sacked".
"From the outset of this process the complainant was not being treated fairly or reasonably," he wrote.
He said it was clear from the agency's own investigation report that Inland Fisheries CEO Francis O’Donnell "sought to influence the investigation off the record", an effort he commended the investigator for resisting.
However, he added: "I do not know whether the CEO's attempt to influence the disciplinary process surreptitiously was an isolated event or not."
The adjudicator said that in the context of his other actions, Mr O’Donnell's move to personally find and review the CCTV footage of the tractor being returned made it "seem like the CEO was targeting the complainant for some reason".
Mr O'Donnell's failure to attend the hearing or give evidence "left large gaps in the respondent's case", he added.
It was unclear whether Mr O'Gorman’s state of mind in the wake of the suspension was taken into account in the decision to sack him, Mr Murphy wrote, adding that he was "unsure" of the agency's final position on the earlier claim Mr Gorman had "misappropriated fuel" and how that had contributed to the dismissal.
Letting Mr Gorman’s teenage son drive the tractor "was obviously a serious error, but it was also a unique situation" given that the complainant had just been served with a "sudden and unfair suspension" after 37 years' of "unblemished" service, he added.
Mr Murphy's conclusion was that the decision to sack Mr Gorman was not a reasonable sanction and had not been arrived at fairly.
Mr Murphy said he was not in a position to grant the reinstatement order sought by Mr Gorman because the relationship between the parties had "functionally ceased" and because if IFI’s process had been fair, Mr Gorman might have suffered a demotion.
He said he was satisfied Mr Gorman had made full and proper efforts to mitigate his loss of earnings since dismissal, but that he would reduce the award by 50% because Mr Gorman had made "a serious error which could have justified demotion or unpaid suspension".
He ordered Inland Fisheries Ireland to pay Mr Gorman €38,500 for unfair dismissal.
