Court stops FAS from sacking Director of Health and Safety

FAS has been blocked by the High Court from taking any further steps to sack its Director of Health and Safety, Greg Craig, and from making any disparaging comments to the media about him.

Barrister Oisin Quinn, S.C., told the court that Mr Craig, of Greenlea Grove, Terenure, Dublin, had been made a scapegoat by FAS and he was continually being offered up to the media.

Mr Quinn, who appeared with Ms M.P. Guinness for Craig, told Mr Justice Paul Gilligan his client had been told early last week he was being dismissed following an internal investigation.

Craig, a former director of corporate affairs at FAS claims the state agency is seeking to avoid a commitment made previously to apologise to him and to pay him compensation for damage caused to him.

He told Judge Gilligan in an affidavit that he had locked himself in his office on Monday, September 5, last to study an internal report by Ignatious Lynam when FAS’s assistant director Conor Dunne had pushed in the door and told him he was firing him with immediate effect.

He said Mr Dunne had gone on to state that he had spent the previous day, Sunday, reading the Lynam report and as a result he had been unable to watch the all-Ireland hurling final on television.

Dunne had said he had studied the Lynam report and that it had established serious breaches of procedure, that he was going to fire him and ordered him to leave the premises and hand in his keys.

Mr Craig told the court he had been so shocked by what had happened that he had taken a diabetic “hypo attack.” Dunne had told him: “I have got advice and I can dismiss you immediately, so I am. You are not to get the opportunity to apply the grievance procedure.”

He had told Mr Dunne he wanted to gather his files and papers, including the Lynam report, but Dunne had insisted he leave immediately and only take his personal belongings. He had threatened that if necessary he would get the gardaí to remove him from the premises.

Mr Quinn told the court that Mr Craig had later been handed a letter by Mr Dunne’s secretary telling him his email account and phone had been cut off and he was to leave the building or head office security staff would be called to escort him off the premises.

He said Mr Craig believed he would have an opportunity to challenge the findings of the Lynam report.

Mr Quinn said that as part of the winding down process of FAS Mr Craig was to be transferred to the Department of Social Protection in 2012 but he would be unable to take up that employment if he was not an employee of FAS.

Judge Gilligan granted Mr Craig an injunction restraining FAS from taking any steps to further implement the purported dismissal and a further injunction restraining FAS from making or communicating or publishing any adverse or disparaging statements concerning him.

Mr Craig had claimed that on a number of occasions certain matters regarding him had been leaked by FAS to the media.