While the Budget rightly dominates coverage today, a story that on other days may have been a page lead, sits quietly in the bottom corner of a late Home News page in The Irish Times.
Might be nothing huge to it, but interesting all the same. Olivia Kelly reports…
MINISTER FOR the Environment John Gormley intervened in a disciplinary dispute between DCU and a lecturer at the university, when he was a Green Party TD, an Employment Appeals Tribunal has heard.
Mr Gormley in 2002 contacted the president of DCU, Ferdinand von Prondzynski, on behalf of computer applications lecturer Dr Seán O’Nuallain. Prof Prondzynski told Mr Gormley it would be unethical to discuss the case, the tribunal heard…
The broader point on this one is, I think, the way universities are fairly selective with their reading of the universities act 1997. Especially in DCU, Ferdinand – an expert in labour law – has sacked a couple of lecturers without the proper notice being given. but whats more is that a lot of lecturers cannot be sacked (unless grievous circumstances) due to tenures and that’s were the wording of the act allows them to be fairly selective. although, O Nuallain’s case is interesting, he claims that students were bullyed and harrassed by DCU as part of his case. perhaps it will come out in the next couple of days at the EAT.
Aye Stephen, you’re right, O’Nuallain’s case is unusual, the broader case itself is interesting too.
Though I understand you’re talking about the wider case the actual details of the case are irrelevant from the angle we’re looking at it though, it’s about Gormley contacting someone.
Of related interest is the Supreme Court appeal in Cahill v DCU, which Von Pron has just lost. Link to opinion at http://courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/Webpages/HomePage. I don’t think that the sort of cavalier attitude to employee rights we see in these cases will be the norm from now on – university presidents will find it in their interests to keep it strictly legal – so asking TDs to intervene may be a thing of the past.
Was just looking there too, Indo gave it a fairly good write up, not a page lead tho
I have a feeling MR O’Nuallain was a member of the green party at the time. He seems to have been involved in writing their information technology policy.
http://www.greenparty.ie/en/policies/information_technology