{"id":281630,"date":"2026-02-05T06:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T06:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/281630\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T06:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T06:26:09","slug":"irish-bus-driver-sacked-after-chasing-london-thief-didnt-tell-family-in-case-they-worried-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/281630\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish bus driver sacked after chasing London thief didn\u2019t tell family in case they worried \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Limerick<\/a> man who was sacked by a London<\/a> bus company after he assisted a customer who had been robbed, has revealed that he did not tell his family in Ireland what had happened in the summer of 2024 as he did not want to worry his mother.<\/p>\n

Mark Hehir (62) who is originally from Limerick, was fired by Metroline after he chased down a thief who had stolen jewellery belonging to one of his passengers, Katalin Kaszas.<\/p>\n

More than 125,000 people have signed a petition supporting him that was begun after an employment tribunal last week upheld Metroline\u2019s decision to sack the bus driver. <\/p>\n

British justice minister David Lammy told the House of Commons on Tuesday that Hehir \u201cis of course a hero and deserves our support\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking on RT\u00c9 radio\u2019s News at One, Hehir said that he did not go home to Limerick at Christmas because he knew his family would know \u201cthere\u2019s something up. We\u2019re very close, I knew my family would know there\u2019s something up. And I\u2019ve never told my family all the way through this whole experience about what happened because I didn\u2019t want them to be worrying about me over here\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI called it my little white lie, but it\u2019s a protective lie as such because my mom was 84. I\u2019m not gonna land out on my mom\u2019s doorstep and have her to deal with it thinking her son is in trouble in London. You don\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the tribunal decision last week Hehir telephoned his sister and informed her of the incident and the subsequent tribunal decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were kind of dumbfounded and she texted me back then to say, listen, this thing is after breaking worldwide, I think Mam needs to know or someone is going to tell her. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo she actually went over and told my mum and as expected, my mum said she was absolutely very, very proud of me, but at the same time, she thought that I should have rang her because she\u2019s your mother. That\u2019s why she\u2019s there. You know, it\u2019s that sort of thing, but I didn\u2019t want to bring it on her because I know she would worry, if that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Irish bus driver who chased necklace thief is hero, says British justice ministerOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

When asked if he would like his bus driving job back, Hehir said that he could not work for a company that treated their staff the way he had been treated by Metroline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe policy is contradictory. In one part of the policy, it says you\u2019re responsible for the health, safety and upkeep of your passengers. And the other side of the policy, is that you cannot leave your cab. So it\u2019s kind of contradictory. How do you help someone if you cannot leave your cab? <\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is kind of the debate we\u2019re having in the House of Commons at the moment. They\u2019re trying to change the policy to make it such that drivers or other people will be protected from this sort of thing happening again in future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Limerick man who was sacked by a London bus company after he assisted a customer who had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,1396,99,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-281630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-limerick","10":"tag-london","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}