An analyst who exposed serious errors with An Garda Síochána’s homicide data has claimed at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) that a senior officer failed to support her when she was exposed to sexual harassment and bullying.
Lois West, the civilian deputy head of An Garda Síochána Analysis Service (GSAS), said she felt she was “virtually being stalked” by a “volatile” and “emotionally unstable” senior official at Garda headquarters, who she said claimed he had “shot dead 27 people”.
She said the man would “orchestrate” opportunities to be alone with her and told her how “multiple previous partners had met some end, some sticky end”.
Ms West, who is on long term sick leave from her role with GSAS, was giving evidence on her complaints under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014; the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005; and the Payment of Wages Act 1991, on a second day of her WRC hearing on Tuesday.
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Her case is that she faced bullying, harassment and sexual harassment, and had her career held back and her pay cut while on sick leave, since she testified to the Oireachtas on errors in official homicide data in 2018.
She said Assistant Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan’s response in writing to her concerns about the senior official made her feel as if he “does not care about me, he is not doing anything to protect me or help me”.
The letter questioned her authority for revoking the senior official’s swipe card and said he would require a new one, as he would be returning to Garda headquarters after a period of leave, Ms West said.
“I broke down,” she said. “On the one hand I was being told I was effectively the head of GSAS, on the other I was unable to protect my staff... I didn’t feel safe, I didn’t feel my team was safe; I felt I’d no choice but to go on sick leave.”
After later being informed that the senior official was no longer with the force, Ms West returned to work. However, she said she then learned a colleague was being promoted to principal officer grade, one level above her, with “no competition”.
Ms West said she had to take sick leave again in November 2020 because of a dermatitis condition her GP attributed to workplace stress.
She told the WRC she managed to return to work for one day in February 2021, when a new manager who had taken over responsibility for GSAS, Garda chief information officer Andrew O’Sullivan, told her to drop out of a training course, that she would no longer be managing a team, and that she would only be allowed to work on “one project, chosen by him” and was not to “expand out into other work”.
She said she resumed her sick leave the following day.
“I believe I have reached a glass ceiling in An Garda Síochána to the point where my ethical actions are being held against me [and] my career is being stymied,” she wrote in one letter to management.
Ms West said she felt she was being “set up to fail” because it was announced that a vacancy for a principal officer post in GSAS she hoped to get was to be filled by open competition, though she had been previously informed it would be an internal process.
[ Garda civilian analysts ‘belittled and treated poorly’ over homicide figuresOpens in new window ]
The tribunal heard Ms West remains on sick leave from her post to this day and was placed on half pay from March 2021 before being reduced to no pay from December 2022.
Ms West said she had received no follow-up from the force since a letter to her solicitors in which the force responded to the findings of the investigation report examining her complaints about the senior official in June 2022.
“I’m broken, I’m absolutely broken, because I’ve lost my career,” she said.
The case continues.
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