State's note to US embassy critical of Irish worker's dismissal

THE DEPARTMENT of Foreign Affairs sent a strongly worded note to the US embassy here criticising the manner in which it had terminated the employment in 1987 of an Irish woman who alleges she was raped in the Dublin home of a senior embassy official in 1976, the High Court heard yesterday.

In its “note” written in 1997, 10 years after Ailish Nic Phaidín was forced to resign from her 11-year employment with the embassy, the department also asked the embassy to give sympathetic consideration to the granting of compensation to Ms Nic Phaidín.

The letter stated Ms Nic Phaidín had been “forced to exist in a personal and economic no man’s land” after losing her embassy position.

Ms Nic Phaidín has claimed she was raped by a US embassy official in his home in 1976 after a drug was put in her drink in the embassy bar. She also claims she was assaulted by another embassy employee on another occasion in the years before her dismissal.

On the second day of her case yesterday, Ms Nic Phaidín told Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns it was “utterly mortifying and embarrassing” after she was dismissed in 1987 and she never got her life back on track.

She met US president Bill Clinton in Tampa, Florida, in an effort to raise her case and had written to a former taoiseach and tánaiste also, she said.

Now aged 60 and a PR consultant, Ms Nic Phaidín has sued the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the State as a result of losing her job at the embassy.

Originally from Rathmullan, Co Donegal, but now living in Palm Bay, Florida, she claims she sought assistance from the Department of Foreign Affairs in the settlement of her employment dispute with the US embassy. She claims the department breached its duty of care to her and acted negligently in allegedly not conveying an offer in 1996 of €200,000 from the embassy.

In denying those claims, the department says it acted as an intermediary and attempted to bring her situation to the attention of the embassy. While there were discussions in 1996 on some kind of an offer, no offer was in fact ever made, it claims.

The State claims it had no duty of care to Ms Nic Phaidín and says at all times the department did its best for her.

Yesterday Denis McCullough SC, for the State, read a three-page note to the court sent by the department to the US embassy in 1997 about the Nic Phaidín case.

That note said the manner in which Ms Nic Phaidín’s employment was terminated was “unwarranted and distressful to her”. It also stated that on repeated readings of the facts, it was a legitimate conclusion the US embassy had been “unrepentantly lacking” as regards the imperatives of equity and justice.

The case continues.