Staff on the school hot meals scheme were told not to talk about an oven fire that prompted the evacuation of hundreds of pupils from their classrooms in west Dublin two years ago, a worker has told a tribunal.

The school’s management “didn’t want it putting people off the idea” of hot meals in school, a regional manager said.

It was the second Monday in a row that the 340 pupils of Our Lady of Hope Senior National School in Littlepace, Dublin 15, were evacuated because the fire alarm was triggered by newly installed commercial ovens at a kitchen in the school complex.

The incident was disclosed at a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) hearing into a complaint by Clonee woman Ashley Staunton under the Employment Equality Act 1998 taken against The Lunch Bag Ltd, challenging her dismissal in 2024.

The firm is a big contractor on the scheme, serving more than 700 schools and 109,000 children a day – a fifth of the primary schools in Ireland.

The tribunal was told this week that Staunton was one of four staff brought in by The Lunch Bag Ltd when it started work at Our Lady of Hope on November 18th, 2024.

That day the fire alarm was triggered by the opening of one of the new ovens and the school was evacuated, she said in evidence on Wednesday.

The following Monday she and her colleague were on their way to deliver cold lunches when the fire alarm went off and the school was evacuated again.

“We were told a special-needs child had set off the fire alarm,” she said.

She and a coworker went back to the kitchen and started the oven to heat the other meals – but could “smell something burning”, she said.

“When I opened up the oven, there was a flame in it, so I switched off the oven,” Staunton said. The fire alarm had not gone off at that point, she said.

She told her colleague: “We need to go and get the principal and tell her it’s a real fire,” she said. Both she and the vice-principal had phoned for the fire brigade, and she was told to end the call by the vice-principal.

“The caretaker told us there was no fire … He silenced the alarm,” she said. “He told the vice-principal to cancel the fire brigade, that there was no need, but the fire brigade was like: ‘No, we still have to come in case the fire spreads,’” Staunton said.

By then, the school had been evacuated for the second time that day.

Afterwards, Staunton said, the senior fire officer at the scene met staff. She said the first thing he mentioned was: “Whoever switched off the oven did the right thing.”

The fire officer took issue with the lack of a fire map for the premises and said it had been “wrong” to attempt to cancel the fire brigade call-out “because it was a school”, Staunton added.

She said regional manager Brendan Robinson attended the school and called her to a meeting later that day. He said: “The principals don’t want anyone to know there was a fire here today,” she said.

As the worker’s vetting had not come through, she was informed by Robinson on November 28th that she was to go to work in the junior school reheating “cubbyhole”, the tribunal heard.

Staunton said she told Mr Robinson: “I’m claustrophobic. That’s going to cause havoc on me.”

Staunton said she had received therapy for her fear of tight spaces, but Robinson asked her to “give it a go”.

Staunton admitted under cross-examination by Robin Hyde, for the respondent, that she said nothing earlier to her employer about her medical condition – including in a health questionnaire.

Robinson said after the fire he told the four staff at the school: “Don’t engage in any conversation on the incident on WhatsApp.”

“The principals didn’t want it getting sensationalised that there was a fire in the school and they didn’t want it putting people off the idea of the hot meal in the school,” he said.

Asked to identify any performance issue on Staunton’s part, Robinson said the fire on November 25th “was caused by the oven being loaded incorrectly”.

However, he could not say who loaded the oven and accepted no performance issues were documented or raised with Staunton.

Counsel for the complainant, Elaine Davern-Wiseman

said her client was “dismissed because she is claustrophobic” and that her condition was “heightened” by her employer’s failure to provide fire-safety training.

Adjudicator Orla Jones said the complainant side could submit to her a further medical report and gave four weeks for a further exchange of legal submissions.