The health service has been severely criticised for failing to suspend a senior hospital pharmacist for over a year after complaints of repeated sexual harassment were made against him by a more junior employee, who has won nearly €87,000 in compensation.
In a decision published today, a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator wrote that it was "difficult" to disagree with the junior worker when she said the HSE "makes it easy" for alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment.
At the time of a hearing in August, the tribunal was told the senior pharmacist had not yet faced a disciplinary sanction a year after his victim first made a complaint against him and was still in his job at an unidentified public hospital.
Meanwhile, the junior employee had been "shuffled around" at work and had to resort to taking stress-related sick leave because her harasser had continued to contact her even after being ordered not to.
The HSE has now been held liable for the man's conduct.
Representing herself before the hearing, the complainant, a hospital pharmacist, said in evidence to the WRC that the behaviour started in May 2023, when she was in the process of buying a house.
Upon showing the senior pharmacist - a man in his late 40s - the location of a property she was looking at, the man remarked that "he would be able to see [me] in the shower", the complainant told the hearing.
In January 2024, the man showed her a picture of two women and asked which of them she thought "prettier". "He then zoomed in on the one with larger breasts and said he preferred this one because of them," the complainant said.
Later that month, the senior pharmacist let another worker exit the hospital's dispensary, but then blocked her path.
On an unspecified date, the senior pharmacist remarked to the complainant that her "lips looked nice today", the tribunal heard. The worker said that there were "further incidents" of sexual harassment between February and April 2024.
She finally filed a formal complaint after the senior pharmacist showed her a picture of "naked male genitalia" while they were alone in an office together on 20 June 2024, the hearing was told.
The senior pharmacist responded in writing to the complaint on 9 July 2024, admitting showing the picture and apologising, the tribunal heard. It had been "office banter", the complainant said.
However, he accepted that it was "intimidating and offensive behaviour" which "fell well wide of the mark and would be entirely substandard of workplace etiquette expected of a HSE employee", the tribunal heard.
The HSE, however, submitted that there was no admission in the letter about the genitalia picture.
The complainant said she was not interviewed about her complaint until eight months later in February 2025.
She added that since complaining, she has had to "continually deal with this man coming into [my] office" even after he was "told not to by HR".
She said she had been forced to go off work on stress leave twice simply because she had to face her harasser "too many times".
She had to move her work location repeatedly, while the senior pharmacist "continued in the workplace as he had previously done with no action taken against him", she said.
The complainant also told the hearing that she understood there were "other complaints" against the senior pharmacist - an assertion which was neither "disputed nor objected to" by the employee relations manager who appeared for the HSE.
The HSE’s representative accepted it "did not do enough to protect the complainant" and declined to cross-examine her, adding that health service management was "not questioning [her] credibility or version of events".
An internal investigation had found in favour of the complainant and the matter had been "recently referred" to a disciplinary process, it was submitted.
Adjudicator Conor Stokes found as fact, on the basis of the complainant’s uncontroverted evidence, that "all the incidents described by the complainant took place".
"I find that the complainant has established that she was sexually harassed by a work colleague," he wrote.
Noting that neither party had provided him with the internal investigation report, he wrote: "It appears that there is no reason as to why she was not believed."
He noted that the HSE's explanation for not suspending the senior pharmacist pending the investigation was that he "had to be given due process" and "was entitled to natural justice and fairness".
"Where, one might ask, was the complainant’s entitlement to due process and natural justice and fairness and the right to a safe working environment?" Mr Stokes wrote.
He noted when he heard the case in August that it was 13 months since the worker first complained of sexual harassment, but that "no disciplinary action had been taken against the alleged offender".
He concluded that the HSE had taken only "minimal" steps to protect the complainant and that the harasser "seems not to have been put out at all". The HSE "wholly failed" in its legal duty to shield the complainant from more sexual harassment.
"The complainant noted that the HSE policies do not make reporting sexual harassment easy and that she was not able to get a support contact person during the year-long ordeal," he wrote.
"She noted that the policy is difficult on victims but makes it easy for alleged harassers. Having considered the submissions and oral evidence of both parties, I find it difficult to conclude otherwise," he wrote.
He concluded the HSE was liable for discrimination by way of sexual harassment in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998 and awarded the complainant compensation equivalent to a year’s gross pay, €86,717.
He further directed the HSE to disregard the time the claimant spent on leave for work related stress for the purposes of calculating her sick leave entitlements.
