Dean denies cleaner cried over resignation

A cleaner who claims she was pressurised into quitting her job at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast phoned the Dean sobbing that she did not want to leave, a tribunal heard today.

Lawyers for Ann Hewitt, 63, said she had spent the weekend crying at the prospect of losing the £6,000 (€8,900) a year job she cherished.

Mrs Hewitt claims the cathedral board effectively threw her out of work in August 2002 because she took time off after a fall in the car park.

But three days after handing in her resignation, she called Dean Houston McKelvey.

Her barrister, David O’Sullivan, told the industrial tribunal in Belfast: “She was crying on the phone to the Dean and she was very emotional.

“She said she didn’t want to leave her job, that she loved her wee job.”

Giving evidence to the hearing, the Dean denied she was in tears when he spoke to her by telephone.

“She said she had had a wee weep over the weekend but she certainly was not weeping to me,” he said.

Dean McKelvey accepted that even when people make major decisions and put them in writing, they can have second thoughts.

But he insisted: “We all have to live with decisions we make as responsible and mature adults.”

Mrs Hewitt, who suffered from polio as a child, exacerbated an already serious condition when she fell in May 2002.

During her evidence last month she told how the board wrote to her less than three months later demanding to know when she was coming back to work.

Her resignation letter had then been written in panic, she claimed.

But the Dean insisted that as chairman of the board, he had acted honourably in accepting her resignation.

“Mrs Hewitt was not dismissed, Mrs Hewitt resigned,” he said.

“There was absolutely no pressure whatsoever placed upon her to do so by the board of Belfast Cathedral or any of its representatives.”

Philip Babington, for the board, insisted that the inquiry from the cathedral’s honorary treasurer over when she hoped to come back, had been written in “friendly and considerate language”.

He said: “If he had not asked when she hoped to return to work after three months he might well have been accused of callous indifference.

Mr Babington also rejected arguments by Mrs Hewitt’s legal team that she had been “jostled” into an impulsive act of quitting.

Her resignation letter had been carefully and unambiguously written, and hand delivered, he stressed.

“When it was handed in to the Dean there was no indication by the applicant that she was in any way distressed or emotional.”

A reserved judgment on the tribunal is expected next month.