A FORMER HSE hospital worker has been awarded over €28,500 by an Employment Appeals Tribunal.
An expert said she suffered from the most severe symptoms she had ever seen in a victim of bullying.
The tribunal, which was strongly critical of the HSE, found that Violet Laird of Carnone Road, Raphoe, Co Donegal, a mother of three, had been constructively dismissed by the HSE North Western Area, Letterkenny Hospital.
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the tribunal said it was credible that Mrs Laird “suffered from being isolated and bullied within the work place”.
In a determination issued yesterday it found that Ms Laird “further suffered” by the HSE’s “failure to properly and proactively investigate the allegations made for the period of a year between April 2004 and March 2005.”
“Matters involving allegations of bullying by their nature and by an ongoing lack of resolution, worsen with time, which was precisely what occurred,” the tribunal found.
Failures by the HSE resulted in Ms Laird’s working conditions becoming “intolerable”. She had continued to be rostered with the staff she complained had bullied her.
The tribunal rejected the HSE’s contention that it had acted in a fair and reasonable manner towards Ms Laird.
The situation got so bad and went on for so long that in desperation Ms Laird’s husband wrote to the President, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Health, TDs and senior management seeking help, the tribunal had been told.
She was forced to resign in 2007. She said the whole situation had ruined her and her family’s lives.
The bullying arose after a shift change had been introduced by HSE management in April 2003 so that cleaning could be done before patients got up for the day.
Ms Laird, who had worked in psychiatric admissions since 2002, had co-operated with the change but had been scapegoated by other staff who were against it.
The tribunal was told her colleagues “began to treat her differently, slamming doors, laughing behind her back, timing how long she took to do things, spilling drinks on her clean floors’’.
On one occasion when she was preparing the dinner trays one of her male colleagues came beside her, banged down the trays and splashed water all over her.