Welfare official not guilty of coercion

A 48-year-old Department of Social Protection official has been found not guilty of coercion at Sligo Circuit Court.

Judge Keenan Johnson directed the jury to return the verdict after ruling the prosecution had not established that the complainant had been intimidated.

He stressed he was making no determination on the truthfulness of either the accused, Andrew Gilmartin of Drumfad, Grange, Co Sligo, or the complainant, Martha Rooney of Colleary Drive Sligo. She had alleged that the defendant asked her for her oral sex in return for her not being prosecuted for fraud, during an interview at the social welfare offices in Sligo on April 9, 2014.

Mr Gilmartin was charged with intimidating Ms Rooney with a view to compelling her to do an act which she had a lawful right to abstain from doing.

Ms Rooney had told the court that she attended the social welfare offices after getting a letter about the fact she had been working while claiming lone parent’s allowance. She said the accused had become angry after she admitted she was also attending the National Learning Network, had asked her what she would do for him, and had said: “Here’s what’s going to happen — you are going to give me a blow job”.

The defendant, who admitted using bad language and being “unprofessional”, denied that he said this.

Judge Johnson said that given Ms Rooney’s evidence she had been “economical with the truth” when filling out her lone parent’s allowance form, and given the absence of corroboration, a jury could not but have a reasonable doubt and would therefore have to return a not guilty verdict.

The judge urged changes “as a matter of urgency” in how interviews are conducted in the department, saying it was “no longer feasible or acceptable in this day and age” to have the doors of interview rooms locked. Where no CCTV was present this left “both the interviewer and the interviewee vulnerable to false accusations”, he said.