A fisheries officer has claimed he was penalised, singled out and ostracised after he highlighted to a former minister and to his own senior management that more than a dozen hired vehicles had been assigned to staff without insurance cover.
James Doherty, an assistant fishery inspector with Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI), said he was involved in a crash while driving one of these vehicles on August 10th, 2021.
He said IFI management had known there was a problem with the insurance cover shortly after the crash but he was not told.
Giving evidence at a Workplace Relations Commission hearing in Letterkenny on Monday, he said he had provided to gardaí insurance details he had received from his employer.
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Subsequently, he said, he was pursued about compensating others involved in the crash.
Doherty said in May 2022 a Senator told the Seanad some IFI vehicles had not been insured and one had been involved in a crash in Donegal.
He said he had been told by the then IFI chief executive Francis O’Donnell that everything would be sorted out. He also said he had been told by IFI not to tell gardaí about the insurance issue.
Doherty said following the Senator’s comments, he was mocked and ridiculed locally. He said his health deteriorated and his marriage suffered. He said he felt betrayed and let down by the organisation.
He said the WRC hearing was the first opportunity to tell his story.
Doherty’s counsel, Ciaran Elders, said not only had IFI thrown his client “under the bus” but it had then driven forward and back over him.
Doherty said he had been assured by senior management that he would not be left out of pocket as a result of the car crash. However, he said in October 2022 he had received an email which showed the IFI’s insurers had told the agency the previous November that, as the vehicle had no insurance cover, there would be no indemnity provided.
He said on November 28th 2022 a lawyer acting for others involved in the crash told him in a letter the insurance details he provided to gardaí were incorrect. He said he believed he was being treated as the fall guy.
Doherty is claiming that he was penalised and ostracised over writing a protected disclosure to the then minister for the environment Eamon Ryan and senior IFI management.
Counsel for IFI Tiernan Lowey said his client’s position would be that individuals accused of penalising Doherty had not been aware of the protected disclosure. He also said IFI had not been definitively informed until November 2022 that the insurer would not cover the cost of the crash as there was legal disagreement up to that point.
Doherty told WRC adjudication officer Shay Henry he decided in June 2023 to set out his views on the issue to O’Donnell and another senior manager. He said he knew the letter “would be like a bomb going off in IFI”.
Reading the letter to the hearing, Elders said it identified Fine Gael’s Seán Kyne as the Senator who had raised the absence of the car insurance in the Seanad. Elders quoted Doherty as saying: “I was stressed and very embarrassed and seriously down for weeks after the news. I received continuous mockery and jeering about vehicles not being insured from people I met.”
In the letter, Doherty said he had fallen into “a state of embarrassment, guilt, anxiety and long periods of depression”.
Doherty said he believed IFI knew it had committed an offence and failed to inform gardaí or him within the legal time frame.
Doherty said a few weeks after the letter, a complaint was made about the use of covert cameras. He said this named five employees but only he was investigated.
“I knew then I was on my own,” he said.
In a statement issued after Monday’s hearing, O’Donnell denied coercing Doherty not to report the insurance issue to gardaí. He said immediately on learning of the issue, he had reported it to his board.
The hearing continues on Tuesday.
