Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC). <\/p>\nThe complainant told the WRC he experienced a series of \u201cmicroaggressions against the first official language\u201d over the 2\u00bd years he spent working at the agency. <\/p>\n
These included being asked whether he was a member of Sinn F\u00e9in when he disclosed his background as a native Irish speaker to a manager, and what he said was an \u201cattitude\u201d that it was \u201cannoying\u201d to provide official publications as Gaeilge. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I leave the FSAI, there will be zero Irish language capacity … there is no one else who is fluent and can speak it, read it and write it to an advanced level,\u201d \u00d3 Coist\u00edn wrote in the email. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe sad fact is that when I am gone, there will be more Polish, Spanish, French and Italian in the FSAI than Irish. As an Irish State agency, that is shameful,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n
He added that the only \u201creal excuses\u201d for not wanting to learn the language were that a person was \u201can anti-Irish racist\u201d or \u201clazy\u201d, a tribunal has heard.<\/p>\n
In his evidence to the WRC, \u00d3 Coist\u00edn said he was upset that a human resources manager at the agency had accused him of \u201cracially harassing people\u201d with the message. <\/p>\n
\u00d3 Coist\u00edn said in his evidence the FSAI was full of \u201cvery nice, highly educated people\u201d, but there was \u201cno competency in Irish\u201d. <\/p>\n
FSAI\u2019s human resources manager Jackie Wall gave evidence that she was approached with several verbal complaints before she had an opportunity to read the email herself. Two staff members addressed complaints in writing \u201cabout how upset they were by some of the language used\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were, I would say, angry, hurt, there was a range of emotions in the office on that particular day,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Her concern was that it would turn into a \u201ckeyboard warriors\u201d situation, with \u201cwords going back and forward\u201d on the email system and staff WhatsApp groups. \u201cOne word can lead to another, to another, and that can cause a bigger issue,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Counsel said \u00d3 Coist\u00edn had been \u201cexonerated\u201d of the alleged breach of the diversity and equality policy, but that the investigation found that he did breach the agency\u2019s email policy.<\/p>\n
\u00d3 Coist\u00edn argued that his email amounted to a protected disclosure in respect of the spending of State money and compliance with the Official Languages Act.<\/p>\n
However, the agency\u2019s barrister, Peadar \u00d3 Maoil\u00e1in, said \u00d3 Coist\u00edn had failed to identify alleged wrongdoing in his email and was out of time to pursue a whistleblower complaint. <\/p>\n
In two decision documents published by the WRC on the dispute on Thursday, adjudication officer Breiffn\u00ed O\u2019Neill ruled that \u00d3 Coist\u00edn had not been dismissed when he was placed on administrative leave, as his pay continued. <\/p>\n
The \u201coperative cause\u201d for the termination at the end of 2024 was the expiry of the fixed-term agency contract \u2013 meaning he had no jurisdiction to rule on the matter under the legislation. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill found further that \u00d3 Coist\u00edn had been too late in filing a further set of statutory complaints under the Protected Disclosures Act and the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Workers) Act to challenge the events of December 2024 as either penalisation or less-favourable treatment. <\/p>\n
The adjudicator rejected an argument advanced by \u00d3 Coist\u00edn that he was disadvantaged by the fact the State had not published an Irish-language version of those laws. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former State employee who was put on administrative leave for sending a mass email to colleagues calling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,13358,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-642309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-food-safety-authority-of-ireland-fsai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642309","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=642309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}