follows a similar finding in regard to another female garda<\/a> who was found to have been treated unfairly by the garda organisation when she was out sick with stress. In that case, the woman was awarded \u20ac10,000.<\/p>\nBoth cases found that An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na was in breach of case law established in the High Court judgment of Deming Gao v The Commissioner of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na, specifically in regard to how the organisation classifies sick leave.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The WRC has anonymised both of its cases, but it identifies the employer as a police service. Enquiries by The Journal have established the identities of those involved and the organisation as An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na.<\/p>\n
The female garda at the centre of the most recent case was injured in February 2024 when she suffered a torn calf muscle as she was coming down steps at her garda station to get into her patrol car.<\/p>\n
She was off sick for 71.5 days.<\/p>\n
In its investigation, the garda organisation confirmed the injury by examining CCTV footage and \u201clocal management\u201d confirmed that the injury happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite that, the WRC ruling stated, that local management \u201cexpressed doubt that there was enough evidence\u201d that the garda was entitled to \u201cfull payment\u201d under internal sick pay regulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To avoid paying the garda what she was entitled to, garda management declared her sickness as \u201cordinary\u201d, which is below the threshold of an on-duty injury \u2013 this was an interpretation of the internal Garda Code 11.37. This governs how garda\u00ed are paid full pay while off sick if the injury is deemed to have happened on duty.<\/p>\n
The woman disputed this classification but was blocked by the garda organisation from taking a grievance and was left with no other option but to resort to the WRC, the ruling stated.<\/p>\n
Counsel for An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na argued that the WRC could not inquire into the issue as there were \u201congoing collective discussions\u201d around the sick leave entitlement. In other words, the garda representative bodies were in talks with garda headquarters about how 11.37 was imposed on injured members.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The garda organisation also argued that the woman got her full entitlements after a thorough investigation and use of \u201cadministrative discretion\u201d.<\/p>\n
The High Court judgment states that a case must be established that the garda was responsible for their own injury on duty before their entitlements under the relevant protocol are denied.\n<\/p>\n
No accusation<\/p>\n
The garda, in her case to the WRC, said that no accusation was made by An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na that the woman was responsible for her own injury.<\/p>\n
Counsel for the garda organisation argued during the hearing in the WRC that the woman received her entitlements and that it was a \u201cdiscretionary power\u201d of managers to decide the payment. They denied there is an automatic entitlement.<\/p>\n
This local management decision was upheld by the garda human resources department.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na claimed there was \u201cno great financial loss\u201d incurred by the garda and claimed she was short just \u20ac2,092.76 because of their decision.<\/p>\n
In its findings, the WRC determined that they could investigate the case because it was an individual occurrence and not a collective one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The WRC ruling said that any examination of the decision by management was to prevent the arbitrary administration of the regulation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The finding by the WRC also found that garda human resources\u2019 use of 11.37 against the garda exceeded \u201cany reasonable literal or implied interpretation of Section 11.37, which I find led to a misguided discretion when the decision to deny payment under 11.37 was made\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The WRC also found that \u201cno proper procedures\u201d were applied by garda management, especially in regard to how the organisation blocked the garda\u2019s ability to seek a dispute resolution mechanism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ruling found that this was done \u201cwithout reasonable cause\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The WRC directed An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na to pay the garda \u20ac5,000 \u201cto cover both financial loss and compensation to cover the upset caused by the aggravating factors identified above\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It also directed that the garda\u2019s sick leave record should be reclassified in internal files so as not to impact her in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Niall O’Connor AN GARDA S\u00cdOCH\u00c1NA arbitrarily refused to pay full sick leave entitlements to an on-duty garda who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[18,13984,277470,19,17,277471,277472,277473,82,1923,81],"class_list":["post-656505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-eire","tag-garda","tag-garda-management","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-misguided-discretion","tag-no-proper-procedures","tag-refusal-to-pay","tag-technology","tag-the-morning-lead","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117158837664966803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n