A TEACHER who was followed during the course of her work by a private investigator hired by her school principal has secured an interim High Court injunction restraining the principal or anyone acting on his behalf from following her.
Bridget Sweeney, a resource and home-schooling teacher at Ballinteer Community School, Dublin, and with an address in Donnybrook, Dublin, was granted the injunction yesterday against school principal Austin Corcoran or anyone on his behalf.
The injunction, returnable to early next week, was granted by Ms Justice Mary Laffoy following an ex-parte (one side only) application by Conor Bowman, for Ms Sweeney.
Mr Bowman said his client, whose job involved travelling outside the school and liaising with parents, resource centres, local schools and various agencies, had been "subject to surveillance" by private investigators and by the school principal himself while carrying out her work.
As a result of being followed, Ms Sweeney had "enormous concerns" about her personal safety and wellbeing in relation to going about her work, counsel said.
In an affidavit, Ms Sweeney said she had earlier this year initiated separate High Court personal injuries proceedings against the Ballinteer school for personal injuries.
In that action, she alleges she has suffered personal injuries as a result of alleged bullying, harassment and intimidation of her for a number of years by Mr Corcoran.
She said that, at about 9.15am on the morning of February 7th last, after leaving her home to begin her day's work, a grey or silver-coloured car containing two people pulled out after her.
After making a number of turns, she realised the car was following her and became alarmed, she said. The car followed her for several hours and she called the Garda on two separate occasions. They did not arrive after the first call.
About lunchtime, she got her brother to call the Garda. When they arrived at a shop where she was waiting for them, the car following her took off. When she gave the Garda the registration number of the silver/grey car, they discovered it was registered to a private investigator, Tim Doyle, a former garda.
In January last, Ms Sweeney said she noticed Mr Corcoran waiting in his car outside a number of premises she was visiting as part of her job. On one occasion, she said a parent of one of the students she was visiting expressed surprise at seeing Mr Corcoran in the area.
She became "greatly alarmed" by this, she said. Although she had been having difficulties with Mr Corcoran, this was the first time that matters had taken a turn for the worse outside the school. Another employee had told her she was to report her whereabouts to the principal whenever she was going out.
Ms Sweeney said that Mr Corcoran had, in a statement to the Garda on March 14th last, admitted that he had on one occasion hired a private investigator on a private basis to follow Ms Sweeney.
In his statement, Mr Corcoran had denied he had followed Ms Sweeney outside the school and had alleged she was leaving the school without notice and was not going about her duties properly. Ms Sweeney said she rejected every allegation made against her. In her 25 years as a teacher, she had never been subject to a complaint and was "stunned and upset" by the turn of events.
Ms Sweeney said she had enormous difficulties with Mr Corcoran, who had not spoken to her for years.
Although she did not know the motivation behind his action, she believed it was connected to the fact that she had taken a legal case in relation to his alleged treatment of her over the last few years.