A senior diplomat in the Irish Embassy in Paris has brought High Court proceedings aimed at overturning an internal investigation report upholding a claim that he bullied another member of the embassy staff.
Mr Darach MacFhionnbhairr, counsellor at the embassy, secured leave from Mr Justice O'Caoimh yesterday to amend his statement of grounds in his proceedings against the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Notice parties to the proceedings are Mr James McIntyre, a first secretary at the embassy who has alleged he was harassed and bullied by Mr MacFhionnbhairr, and Ms Marie Cross and Mr John McCullagh, two civil servants who were appointed to investigate Mr McIntyre's complaints.
Mr Robert Barron, for Mr MacFhionnbhairr, said his client was Mr McIntyre's superior. Mr McIntyre had claimed he was being bullied and harassed by Mr MacFhionnbhairr. The State now had a policy document - A Positive Working Environment - for dealing with complaints.
Counsel said the facts of the case were widely disputed. There was an investigation by two Department officers.
Material given in the evidence of Ambassador Pádraic MacKernan, which would have been central to any adjudication, had been ignored by the investigators, Mr Barron said.
The information in question was that Mr MacFhionnbhairr was meeting with Mr McIntyre and other first secretaries on March 21st or 22nd, 2002.
That meeting was to make arrangements for a task, assigned by the ambassador, to prepare a report comparing the programmes for government of the two principals in the French elections, Mr Lionel Jospin and Mr Jacques Chirac. A row broke out at the meeting and Mr McIntyre had complained to the ambassador that Mr MacFhionnbhairr was trying to get him to do all of the report, Mr Barron said. But it had emerged that was untrue.
E-mails between the parties made it clear that Mr MacFhionnbhairr had asked Mr McIntyre to prepare a report on the press coverage while Mr MacFhionnbhairr and other officers would do the rest of the report. When Mr McIntyre complained to the ambassador, this matter came to light.
Mr Barron said it was being alleged that Mr McIntyre, when making his complaints, had misled the ambassador or attempted to do so. Mr MacFhionnbhairr had been acquitted, so to speak, of harassment, and convicted, so to speak, of bullying on a number of complaints, all of which depended on who one believed in relation to the meeting in the embassy.
Mr David Barniville, for the investigators, said there was no objection to the amendment sought by Mr MacFhionnbhairr. It was 18 months since leave to take the judicial review action had been granted to Mr MacFhionnbhairr and his clients were anxious to get the matter heard.
This was not a matter appropriate for the High Court because Mr MacFhionnbhairr had in fact pursued an internal Department appeals procedure but later withdrew from that procedure, counsel added.
Mr Richard Humphreys, for Mr McIntyre, said his client's claim that he had been bullied was substantially upheld by the Department. The amendment sought by Mr MacFhionnbhairr should only be allowed in exceptional circumstances.
The case now being made by Mr MacFhionnbhairr was substantially different from the one he made when applying for leave to take the action.
In the original statement of grounds, Mr MacFhionnbhairr claimed that the investigators had correctly ruled, in the course of interviewing Mr McIntyre, that complaints against the ambassador concerning the ambassador's initial handling of the complaint were inadmissible.
Mr MacFhionnbhair was now doing a 180 degree turn around and saying that the investigators were wrong in not having regard to an alleged claim that Mr McIntyre had misrepresented to Ambassador MacKernan the task assigned to him at the March 2002 meeting.
Mr McIntyre rejected any contention of having misrepresented the situation.
Mr Justice O'Caoimh said he believed Mr MacFhionnbhairr had an arguable case and he would permit the amendment.