A prison officer who went absent without leave (AWOL) to fight in the Ukrainian International Legion has argued before the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) that his sacking was “excessive”.
Brian Meagher, who is seeking to return to his duties at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, said he arranged cover with a colleague through an unofficial “swap system”. He had hoped to go to Ukraine and return “with no one knowing”.
He was dismissed after a senior official saw him giving a TV interview from a hospital bed in September 2022 after he was wounded in action. He had left for Ukraine the previous May.
The case was referred to the Irish Prison Service director general and then to the secretary general of the Department of Justice, who ultimately decided to dismiss Mr Meagher in February 2023.
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The WRC on Friday heard some prison officers engage in an informal system of swapping shifts for cash. Mr Meagher had left a sum of €1,800 with a friend in an attempt to make up the difference beyond a period of accrued annual leave for his planned time in Ukraine.
Five shifts were covered and one was not, said Mr Meagher, who agreed with his barrister Brian Carroll BL that the arrangement had failed.
“I was by the Russian border, it wasn’t like I could get in my car and go,” he told the hearing.
Mr Meagher told Mr Carroll he worked in the Irish Defence Forces from 2003 to 2018, and joined the prison service in February 2018 to earn more money in order to buy a house.
Mr Meagher said he left Ireland for Ukraine around May 27th or 28th, 2022 to “go and help”. He said he had a three-year-old daughter who was then living less than 20km from the Ukrainian border.
He said he volunteered with GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence service, and was not paid.
Asked why he had not responded to letters from the prison service in September 2022, Mr Meagher said he was unable to as he was “lying in a hospital bed in Ukraine being operated on”.
The disciplinary process and his dismissal then followed.
Asked whether going to Ukraine was good decision, Mr Meagher said it ultimately was not given he was now before the WRC, but he was proud of what he did.
Peter Leonard BL, for the State, put it to the complainant that the “swap system” was not sanctioned by the prison service. Mr Meagher agreed it was not, but said swaps were allowed to happen and he noted that one man he worked with lived in Sweden. Mr Leonard said Mr Meagher had an obligation to his job and had not fulfilled it.
Governor Mary Leyden, who has responsibility for industrial relations in the prison service, told Mr Leonard that Mountjoy is 250 prisoners over capacity and such pressures mean it has to rigidly manage staff absences.
[ Irish prison officer challenges sacking for going Awol to fight in UkraineOpens in new window ]
In a closing submission, Mr Leonard said the “emotive scenario” of Mr Meagher going to fight in Ukraine “really is not relevant” in the case.
“The Irish Prison Service cannot function if people contracted as prison officers go AWOL without explanation,” he added.
Mr Carroll said Mr Meagher accepted that what he had done was “wrong” and “misguided” and he had “foolishly relied” on the swap system. He submitted the move to dismiss his client was “excessive” and it was “unjust and unreasonable” to not afford him an oral hearing with his employer.
Mr Leonard said his instructions were to resist reinstatement as a remedy for unfair dismissal and there had been “a breakdown in mutual trust between the parties”.
Adjudicator Brian Dalton gave the parties six weeks for a further exchange of legal submissions and said he would begin drafting his decision, to be issued in writing, after that point.
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