Dublin Airport police officer loses unfair dismissal case over being sacked for wrongly claiming €250 in lost property

The Dublin Airport Authority (daa) sacked a long-serving airport police officer (APO) after he wrongly claimed €250 in lost cash that was handed into him by an airline passenger.

The man sued for unfair dismissal but Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) Adjudication Officer, Niamh O’Carroll Kelly ruled that the APO’s claim is not well founded.

The daa sacked the APO due to what it described as a fundamental breakdown of trust concerning an incident involving the €250 lost property cash.

In the incident on January 24, 2018, an airline passenger approached the uniformed APO at Dublin Airport’s T2 to say that she found €250 in five €50 notes on a bus close by and handed the €250 to the APO to be claimed by the owner.

The passenger did not leave the APO the required contact details for him to pass on as she was rushing for a flight and the APO put himself down as the "finder" of the money.

On April 25, 2018, precisely three months and one day after the cash was found, the APO returned and claimed the cash as its finder, even though he knew he was not its finder.

However, on May 18, 2018, the Airport Police Service received a call from the woman who found the money in January wondering if it had been claimed.

An APO duty sergeant told the APO who claimed the money that he had no right to claim the property and an investigation was launched and he was suspended on full pay.

An investigation report found that the APO “exercised extremely poor judgment in claiming monies which he was not entitled to claim”.

The APO was sacked by the daa in November last year with the dismissal letter stating that the €250 cash incident led to a fundamental break-down in trust between the parties involved and given the role of an APO “this gives rise to the gravest of concern”.

The APO appealed internally the decision to dismiss him claiming that the daa paid no regard to his 18 years of service; the sanction of dismissal was excessive and that no policy existed which applied to the incident in question.

However, the APO’s appeal failed and the decision to dismiss was upheld.

The daa stated that an APO was not just an employee but an employee in whom the highest degree of trust and confidence was reposed, with APOs having wide ranging statutory powers to stop, detain, search and arrest without warrant.

The daa said that the custom and practice in relation to lost property is that if an APO finds lost property and such lost property is not claimed, the APO may claim same after the specified period of time elapses as he or she was its finder.

However, if a member of the public provides an APO with lost property and such lost property is not claimed, the APO may never claim that property as its finder given that he or she was not its finder but its reporter only.

In her findings, Ms O’Carroll Kelly said that the employer decision to sack the APO is well within the band of reasonableness.