The Rotunda Hospital continued to employ a man after a finding that he sexually harassed a 19-year-old female care assistant in what is meant to be ”the safest place in Dublin for a woman to be or work”, a tribunal has been told.
The head of human resources at the maternity hospital admitted there was “frustration” among some senior midwifery managers that the man had been kept on.
The details were made public as lawyers acting for the female staff member, Kaitlyn Winston, opened complaints of constructive dismissal and gender discrimination against the Rotunda at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Tuesday. The statutory complaints are denied by hospital management.
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Ms Winston’s line manager, clinical nurse manager Jane Hickey, said the complainant told her that the employee – whose name is subject to a reporting restriction by direction of the WRC - had “come up against her or touched her, touched off her” while she was folding scrubs.
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There were discussions on handling the matter as an informal process or via mediation, the WRC heard. Ms Winston said she wanted a formal process instead because she had been informed that the employee was “denying it to the ground”.
An investigation convened under the hospital’s dignity at work procedures on foot of a complaint that the man“made physical contact” in the incident on May 3rd 2022. This was “unwelcome and uninvited” and had a “significant negative impact” on Ms Winston and the complaint of sexual harassment was “on the balance of probabilities, well founded and therefore upheld”, the outcome report read.
The hearing was told the Rotunda defined sexual harassment as “any form of wanted unwanted physical or verbal conduct” which created a “hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment” for an individual.
In discussions about going back to work, Ms Winston said that hospital management eventually agreed that the man would not be in her workspace, but would be present in the hospital.
The complainant said she came back to work early in 2023 knowing this was the position, but that she thought the man ought to have been dismissed.
The tribunal heard that Ms Winston returned to work on a date in the spring of 2023, but encountered the man in a stairwell “laughing as he was coming down, and he looked at me”.
She said she went directly to her line manager’s office and told Ms Hickey she felt the man was “laughing at her”. Ms Hickey told her that the she had just met the man and they had shared “a funny moment, a funny joke” and he had left her office seconds before encountering the complainant.
The hospital’s head of human resources, Joanne Connolly, said the man was served with a final written warning at the conclusion of a disciplinary process chaired by the hospital’s general secretary, Jim Hussey. The man was transferred to general duties, but had restrictions imposed, she said.
The tribunal was told that the man no longer works at the Rotunda for “unconnected reasons”.
Ms Connelly said there was “frustration” that the man “wasn’t dismissed” among a number of managers in nursing and midwifery.
Cillian McGovern BL, who was instructed by Crushell & Co Solicitors in the case, said the hospital was “meant to be arguably the safest place in Dublin for women to be” – but that after encountering the man again on the premises after his “brazen” behaviour the year before, his client had a “reasonable fear” that she would suffer further harassment.
Mark Comerford of the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (IBEC), for the hospital, said it acted in line with its dignity at work policy and that the complainant had not met the standard to establish a case of constructive dismissal.
The adjudicator, Catherine Byrne, closed the hearing and is expected to issue her decision in writing to the parties in due course.
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