A solicitor at the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has alleged he is being discriminated against by being denied the opportunity to prepare a murder case for the State because he is a recovering alcoholic.
It is one of a series of instances of disability discrimination and victimisation alleged by Michael Murphy, an employee of the agency since 2002 who has been working as a prosecutor since he qualified as a solicitor in 2017.
In complaints under the Employment Equality Act 1998, Mr Murphy has claimed that by failing to transfer him out of the DPP's District Court section - likened to an "A&E environment" by one former manager - the agency has both treated him less favourably and denied him reasonable accommodation for his disability.
At hearings this week, the Workplace Relations Commission was told Mr Murphy spent seven weeks in residential treatment for alcoholism in January and February 2019 - disclosing the condition for the first time to his line manager when they met a day after he returned to work after his treatment.
"I said I was taking time off work for anxiety," he said. "As crazy as this may sound, I didn't accept [it], even though I'd booked to go into the Rutland Centre. There’s a part of alcoholism about denialism. Some days I’d say: 'I need to sort this out.’ Other days I’d say I was fine; I just need to cut back."
"I was holding out hope they'd say: "Mick, you’re fine, you’re a heavy drinker," he added.
He said he never kept his alcoholism a secret and believed that senior management in the DPP became aware of it, even though the tribunal heard his initial absence for the treatment was recorded officially as being for "undisclosed" reasons.
"Nothing stays secret for very long in that office," he said.
His barrister, Tiernan Lowey BL, told the WRC that his client’s alcoholism was accompanied by the comorbidities of anxiety and depression - and that the DPP had responded "lamentably".
Mr Murphy's evidence was that he suffers sleepless nights when facing into court appearances with a "very busy list" and does not "really eat properly until court is over".
He added that his medication had to be increased "to deal with the stress and anxiety" of doing work in the District Court section and had to "periodically" take time off work to cope.
"In the District Court, I’m dealing with the public, a certain section of the public, and going to AA meetings is difficult in that you feel a little exposed; that you could be recognised at an AA meeting from your work," he added.
Mr Murphy said he had been pursuing a move to a post in the DPP with less court duty without success since February 2021.
Helena Kiely, the DPP's chief prosecution solicitor, said in evidence that she was already aware of Mr Murphy’s alcoholism from prior legal correspondence in 2019 when he first wrote to her looking for the transfer.
However, she said the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic was making the work "difficult for everyone across the office" and that the priority at the time had been to staff a specialist prosecution unit for sexual offences.
"It’s being suggested you should have been able to infer from that request, given your knowledge of his alcoholism, that it was a request for reasonable accommodation," said Kiwanna Ennis BL, counsel for the DPP.
"Well, I didn’t treat it that way. It was a difficult time for lots of people in the office," Ms Kiely said.
Mr Murphy's evidence was that he decided to be more "forthright" about certain work issues in January 2022, and that he took issue with share of work he was being assigned preparing books of evidence for cases before the Central Criminal Court.
Ms Ennis said there were 20 to 25 prosecutors in the section and 40 to 60 books of evidence to prepare for the Central Criminal Court each year - and asked Mr Murphy whether he was taking issue with being assigned one to three rape cases a year. Mr Murphy said he considered that "still quite low".
"There were a lot of people recently qualified prosecuting in the District Court; certainly I was in the DPP’s office a lot longer. I was used to Central Criminal Court trials, murder trials, rape trials. People came in, they had varying degrees of experience, some had some, some had none," he said.
He said that when he first raised it as an issue in early 2022, "a girl who’d been in the office a year and a half was assigned a murder book".
"I’d never been assigned one," he said. He said that was still the case in January 2023, when a prosecutor with eight months' experience assigned to him for mentoring was tasked with preparing the book of evidence for a murder case.
"You’re concluding that was because of your alcoholism?" Ms Ennis asked.
"No other reason has been given to me," Mr Murphy said.
Declan Keating, who was the head of the District Court section in the DPP from April 2022 to May 2024, said: "The majority of prosecutors in the section were not assigned a murder trial. Many were not even assigned files for the Central Criminal Court," he said.
"I would agree with Mick that murder trials would be more prestigious, more high-profile, but related to that they can also be extremely labour-intensive for the prosecutor," he said.
Under cross-examination from Mr Lowey, Mr Keating said he was never formally told Mr Murphy was an alcoholic. "I'd only heard a rumour in the corridor," he said.
When it was put to the witness that his colleague had called the District Court section of the DPP a "high-pressure A&E environment", he replied: "The message I was getting from Mick after all these meetings was: ‘I want more complicated work.’"
Other instances of discrimination alleged by Mr Murphy are that he was not interviewed for a senior prosecutor position, not being assigned to mentoring new solicitors, comments made on annual review documents and other matters as instances of alleged discrimination.
He also maintains he was victimised in connection with an initial WRC complaint he filed in April 2023. The DPP wholly denies the statutory complaints.
"Regrettably, my client suffers from a disability that makes him clearly very different to people in the same position, and he should have been afforded more favourable treatment," Mr Lowey said in his closing statement yesterday.
"The approach taken by the respondent has continued to stigmatise the disability that my client has been so open about. It has taken a public hearing, over three days, and still he has not been taken out of the District Court unit. That’s potentially a matter for another day," Mr Lowey said.
"The evidence is not there and has not been adduced on behalf of Mr Murphy to make out a prima facie case. In my submission, this claim should not succeed," Ms Ennis said.
Adjudication officer Catherine Byrne is now considering her decision in the matter, which is to be given in writing to the parties at a future stage and published by the WRC after that.
