Former ICC director says bullying led to resignation

A former investment director with ICC Venture Capital has told an Employment Appeals Tribunal she was forced to resign after she became traumatised by bullying and sexual harassment. Conor Lally reports.

Ms Prisca Grady (40) told the tribunal after her resignation from her £100,000 (€127,000) plus per year job she became suicidal and for some months spent most of her time in bed. She said Mr Tom Kirwan, deputy managing director of ICC Venture Capital, had sometimes behaved inappropriately when the two met alone in Mr Kirwan's office to discuss business.

The tribunal heard that, at some meetings, Mr Kirwan had looked her up and down in a suggestive manner and had "gyrated" his hips. Mr Kirwan sat in his seat, pulled it in close to his desk, put his hands below the desk and gyrated his hips, it was alleged. The hearing was also told at some of these meetings Mr Kirwan's "lips would redden" and his "eyes would glaze over".

Since Ms Grady's resignation, ICC Venture Capital and ICC Capital Markets have merged and become Bank of Scotland (Ireland). The bank rejects all of Ms Grady's allegations.

Ms Grady had previously brought her case to an earlier Employment Appeals Tribunal. On that occasion the tribunal ruled the case could proceed despite the fact she lodged her complaints against ICC later than the statutory six-month period after she resigned. She lodged her complaint on January 31st 2001 but the six-month period expired the previous day. But the High Court later ruled her case had been lodged too late, effectively overruling the Employment Appeals Tribunal.

Yesterday was the first day of a scheduled four-day hearing during which Ms Grady is to argue there were unusual circumstances that resulted in her late complaint - namely, that she was so traumatised she had difficulty functioning.

Yesterday the tribunal did not hear evidence surrounding the substantive issue of Ms Grady's alleged constructive dismissal. Instead proceedings centred on assessing Ms Grady's mental state in the six months after her dismissal and on whether her mental state could constitute unusual circumstances that might allow the substantive case proceed despite her complaints having been lodged just after the six-month cut-off point.

Ms Grady paused on several occasions to fight back tears during yesterday's hearing.

She said at the time she resigned at the beginning of August 2002 her "general confidence" was "on the floor". She borrowed a sufficient amount of money with which she intended to support herself, her husband and two young children. Her husband was running a small technology company but he did not have a substantial income at the time, she said.

She moved to Clare and, with the benefit of hindsight, said she had probably done that to "go to a place where I would not be known. . . where I could hide".

In the months before she resigned she said she was under immense pressure.

"My only focus was to plan to get out, out of that place [ICC\], out of Dublin, out of the business. I was at an absolute low," she said.

When her children started their new schools in Clare in September she would get out of bed to get them out to school but would return to bed once they had left the house. "It was a struggle to be back up at a quarter to three when they came home," she said.

She added that, at the time, she had "some good days but four out of five were bad". She also said she kept paracetamol in the house. "I recall if I needed to end it all I could," she told the hearing.

While many of her complaints centred on Mr Kirwan, she admitted under cross examination that three months after leaving ICC she had e-mailed Mr Kirwan in a "friendly" manner to discuss taking up the position of non-executive director on the boards of a number of unnamed companies.

She also agreed that as deputy chairperson of the Higher Education Authority she had attended meetings of that body in the months after her resignation.

However, she denied that before she resigned she had told a number of her colleagues that she had decided to leave ICC as part of a planned "lifestyle change". She insisted she had been forced out of the company because of a pattern of bullying and harassment.

After she left ICC an unnamed company of which ICC was a shareholder hired her to try to sell the company discreetly. When ICC became aware of this, Mr David Fassbender, managing director of ICC Capital Markets had "vehemently" lobbied to block her appointment.

She then rang ICC chairman Mr Phil Flynn to protest and, during that conversation, Mr Flynn suggested to her that she may have to sue the company, she said.

That conversation took place on January 25th, 2001, and her complaint against her former employer was lodged six days later. Before that point, Ms Grady said she had "absolutely not been in a position to begin litigation" because she had "no energy, no strength" and was also in a vulnerable financial position. She agreed the telephone conversation with Mr Flynn may have jolted her into action.

The hearing continues today.