A LIBRARIAN with the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) has brought a High Court challenge to her dismissal arising from alleged insulting language used in e-mails from her to colleagues.
Mary Davis, Belltree House, Maxwell Road, Dublin, who is also a barrister, has brought her action against the Minister for Education and Science over the decision of April 29th, 2008, removing her from her position as faculty librarian with DIT.
She claims her dismissal was neither bona fide, lawful or valid and was made outside the jurisdiction of the Minister and in breach of constitutional rights and her right to natural justice. The Minister acted in an oppressive and arbitrary manner, it is alleged.
The Minister has denied the claims in proceedings which opened yesterday before Mr Justice John Hedigan and continues today.
In an affidavit, Ms Davis said she commenced employment as a librarian with DIT in the early 1990s. She said, from 1998 onwards, there were some inter personal difficulties with a “small clique of staff” who orchestrated a series of allegations and complaints of alleged incidents and misconduct against her concerning e-mails sent by her expressing her views.
The Minister failed to respond to this situation through unbiased conciliation measures and rather adopted a biased and adversarial approach against her, she said.
Ms Davis said those who made allegations against her were either a grade above her or the same grade as herself and also included two influential members of the Human Resources department. She said there was a protracted series of fundamentally flawed inquiries and purported reports into the alleged events leading to the decision of the Minister to remove her from her office in April last year. She had earlier been suspended in June 2005.
Feichin McDonagh SC, for Ms Davis, said his client’s professional duties were very satisfactory but the genesis of the events concerned related to 2001, when she was alleged to have sent some e-mails to staff concerning her attendance/entitlement to attend or non-attendance at a particular training course.
The court was told the e-mails included language which was considered insulting and had caused offence to a number of individuals.