THE WORKPLACE RELATIONS Commission (WRC) has strongly criticised a garda’s suspension from the force during an investigation as a “rubber stamping” exercise. 

The comment was made in a ruling issued following the awarding of €28,000 to a garda by the WRC’s adjudicator David James Murphy following a hearing of the garda’s case against his suspension and the failure to pay him back pay. 

The suspension centred around how the garda, who is not named in the proceedings, responded to a call for assistance from a colleague. The arrested teenager made a complaint against the gardaí after the incident. 

The employer was also anonymised in the report from the WRC as a “policing service”.

The garda was investigated for his use of force in dealing with the assaultive prisoner who attacked a colleague, who was a garda sergeant. 

The garda in this case was cleared of any wrongdoing in court but had been suspended for two years by his employer. 

He took a case to the WRC over the non payment of his allowances during the suspension and that he was not granted fair procedure.

The adjudicator examined the case and said that while he agreed with some of the behaviours of garda management he said that on a number of occasions they were in breach of their own policy.

The finding said the worker was not given reasons for his suspension initially, was not given an opportunity to give his side. He was also not granted access to CCTV footage, a use of force report and given no documentation showing the rationale of his suspension.

He was also not given any alternative to the suspension.

“There is nothing to suggest the repeated extensions were anything other than a rubber-stamping exercise that the worker alleges, he was not given any opportunity to challenge them or provide submissions regarding them,” the ruling found. 

The adjudicator said that the employer were in a unique position as it was handling the decision to suspend the worker as well as pursuing the criminal case against them.

Counsel for the garda organisation argued that “they are alive to the prejudice that HR processes could cause the worker in defending himself”. The adjudicator said this was used as their justification for the suspension.

The WRC found that this position “did not stand up to scrutiny” and that it had refused the suspended garda fair procedure.

“The fact is they had access to information which would have resolved the complaint against the worker relatively quickly. Instead he was left languishing on suspension so that employer could continue to pursue a criminal case that appears to have fallen apart when it reached open court,” the WRC ruled. 

The WRC finding said that workers are not automatically entitled to redress after a suspension in which they were found to have done nothing wrong. 

“This is not such a case, the employer acted extremely unfairly towards the worker over the course of his two year suspension.

“At times they ignored their suspension policy and at other times they applied it in a manner which was totally unreasonable,” the adjudicator found. 

The WRC ordered the grda organisation to pay €28,000 in compensation for breach of rights and the “resulting distress”. The ruling also stated that the award should not be subject to taxation.