A garda with severe asthma, withdrawn from a work-from-home arrangement and ordered back on the beat during a winter Covid-19 surge in 2022, was discriminated against – but it is too late to recover compensation, a tribunal has found.<\/p>\n
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has dismissed an equality complaint against the Commissioner of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na by Garda Joseph Joyce, a veteran of over two decades’ service with the force.<\/p>\n
It was because too much time had passed between the withdrawal of the work-from-home arrangement and the move to file an equality complaint at the WRC.<\/p>\n
Gda Joyce, who was based at Longford Garda Station when the pandemic reached Ireland, said he suffered from chronic respiratory conditions including severe asthma and severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) and required the regular use of inhalers.<\/p>\n
At a hearing last year, Emma Davey BL, for Mr Joyce, said her client had been granted special leave by the force on foot of medical advice in April 2020.<\/p>\n
He was at a “very high risk of severe illness” from Covid-19 and was to “rigorously follow cocooning guidelines”, she submitted.<\/p>\n
That advice was ignored by local Garda management when they ordered him to return to work in person on New Year\u2019s Day 2022, it was further submitted.<\/p>\n
The State had denied his complaints, saying there were “appropriate measures” in place in the district to shield Gda Joyce and his colleagues.<\/p>\n
Giving evidence last year, Gda Joyce said he told local superiors he would continue working from home on the basis of medical advice when he was first asked to come back to work in December 2021.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard that a senior officer wrote to Gda Joyce on the afternoon of New Year\u2019s Eve 2021 directing him to either produce a report from a medical specialist or report for duty the following morning at 7am.<\/p>\n
‘I was horrified, to tell you the truth’<\/p>\n
Gda Joyce told the WRC he spoke by phone with Superintendent S\u00e9amus Boyle on New Year\u2019s Eve and had received an assurance that he “would not be dealing with people” – but was ordered to go out on foot patrol in Longford Town the next day, 1 January 2022.<\/p>\n
“I was horrified, to tell you the truth,” Gda Joyce said.<\/p>\n
He said when he arrived to the station he pointed out to a superior, Brian Boland – then a sergeant, since promoted, that the bottles of hand sanitiser at the station were empty and there were no wipes for cleaning IT equipment.<\/p>\n
He said he was sent out on patrol without a working radio that day, which he said was in breach of protocol, and encountered members of the public who failed to abide by social distancing advice.<\/p>\n
Gda Joyce\u2019s complaint form stated that due to this “disregard” for his condition, he became unwell and was “signed off work\u2026 due to work-related stress” following these events.<\/p>\n
He was ultimately transferred to a different division, the tribunal heard.<\/p>\n
Sgt Boland said in evidence that he “absolutely rejected” that he sent Gda Joyce out on the beat in January 2022 without a working radio.<\/p>\n
He said the radio issued personally to the complainant had “presumably shut down”, but there were “plenty of pool radios available” at the station.<\/p>\n
He added that he “had to be allowed to assume” an officer of Gda Joyce\u2019s experience would know what to do in the circumstances.<\/p>\n
Supt Boyle said in evidence that because so many of his personnel were out on long-term sick leave with injuries or Covid-19, he “had to look at anyone who might be available”.<\/p>\n
“We needed our frontline staff back on the frontline,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mary Gildea, a senior civil servant in Garda administration in the region, said Supt Boyle had contacted her about getting personnel working from home back to their former duties in August 2021.<\/p>\n
Gda Joyce had started receiving “welfare visits” at home around this time from senior garda\u00ed, and took issue with short notice being given and the arrival of marked Garda vehicles at his home.<\/p>\n
It was “a bit much”, he said.<\/p>\n
He confirmed to the WRC he was by then “double vaccinated” against Covid-19, but said of local garda management it was “none of their business”.<\/p>\n
Recounting the evidence of the State\u2019s witnesses in a closing legal submission last year, State counsel Dylan West BL said the now-retired Supt Boyle, had been clear that he “simply never would have said Garda Joyce would never have been working with people”, Mr West said.<\/p>\n
“With respect to Garda Joyce, I say he is grossly exaggerating what might have been required,” he added.<\/p>\n
In her decision, issued today, adjudication officer Penelope McGrath said it seemed to her that by sending Gda Joyce back to work without having him seen by a doctor or conducting a personalised risk assessment, the force had discriminated against him.<\/p>\n
However, she rejected the argument that the discrimination had continued while Gda Joyce remained out of work on sick leave in 2022.<\/p>\n
That left too much of a time gap between the discrimination and the filing of his complaint to the WRC in November 2022 for her to have jurisdiction to uphold his statutory complaint, she found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A garda with severe asthma, withdrawn from a work-from-home arrangement and ordered back on the beat during a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-585370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585370","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=585370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}