A senior employee of the Educational Business Society has secured an interim High Court injunction restraining her dismissal.

Mary Devine claims she discovered "financial irregularities" in the EBS pension scheme but was bullied and harassed when she raised those matters.

Mr Justice Paul Gilligan yesterday granted Ms Devine, of Merrion Village, Merrion Road, Dublin, an interim injunction, returnable to Monday, restraining her dismissal from the EBS. Ms Devine has worked at the EBS since 1970 and most recently worked as assistant manager of the EBS securities department.

Seeking the injunction, John O'Donnell SC, for Ms Devine said she was a pension trustee member of the EBS pension scheme. She had discovered irregularities in that fund and brought those to the attention of authorities in the EBS. She had later been passed over for upgrading and promotion and was also the subject of bullying and harassment by a number of other staff.

As a result of the hostility she experienced, she had suffered stress related illness and was off work and had undegrone counselling. It had taken her some four years to recover from this stress.

However, when Ms Devine had presented herself as fit to resume work earlier this month, she was asked by the company to see a psychiatrist. She did so and was cleared to resume work on a phased basis. However, she had stated she could not work with those staff members who had bullied her. The EBS had said in a letter of June 9th that her functions could not be carried out without interaction with the staff members she complained of and that her contract of employment "stands discharged".

Mr O'Donnell said there was no claim of misconduct against Ms Devine and she was unclear what "discharged" meant. She had received half-pay for the past six weeks and she believed the company intended to terminate her employment. She relied on her salary to meet mortgage and other payments. In any event, she was entitled to at least six months' notice after her 35 years of service.

Mr Justice Gilligan said he would grant an interim order restraining the dismissal of Ms Devine until Monday but would not grant any other reliefs until the defendant had had an opportunity to respond to the claims made. He returned the matter to next Monday.

In an affidavit, Ms Devine said she became a pension trustee member of the EBS pension fund in 1994. In January 1995 she discovered that vital information concerning the split of the fund and the creation of a new manager's scheme had been withheld from her but had been provided to other non-member trustees. She believed the transfer value of that transaction was €3,379,000 million and that the transfer was deliberately withheld from her.

When a fund is split and funds transferred out in that manner, the prior consent of members was required, she said. However, the prior consent of members was never sought nor granted for that transaction.

In January 1995, she learned the staff pension fund had plunged into a deficit of some €1.7 million. She believed the "misappropriation" of monies regarding two principal transactions had contributed to that deficit.

She said one of those transactions involved the funding from the staff fund of the pension package of Henry O'Dwyer, a director of the EBS who retired in 1993. She said that while Mr O'Dwyer remained a member of the staff fund and was entitled to receive such a package, senior management should have funded the managers' pension fund to the level required to fund Mr O'Dwyer's pension package on retirement. That did not occur and the funding of his package from the staff fund had an adverse effect on that fund.

She also said monies were transferred out of the staff pension plan about January 1992 to fund the retirement package of Noel Windle, a director of the EBS. She said Mr Windle was not a member of the plan and had no entitlement to receive such monies.

Ms Devine said she had, at several meetings in 1995, 1996 and 1997, sought explanations for these matters but had received no satisfactory explanation. She also said attempts were made at the meetings to prevent her from pursuing the issue but it was her duty as trustee to pursue the issue. She said her discovery of the irregularities met with hostility and animosity.

She also said she had no option but to ask the Pensions Board to investigate the matters she had raised. A report by KPMG accountants in 2002 had identified serious matters of concern for the members of the pension scheme. However, she said, certain vital and material facts were withheld from KPMG which rendered some of the conclusions of its report unsafe.

She believed that, in dismissing her, the EBS was seeking to prevent her from pursuing those matters.