E-MAILS CONTAINING “sinister” and “disturbing” images of children were circulated among a section of staff at a subsidiary of Bank of Ireland, the Employment Appeals Tribunal heard yesterday.
Pauline Keogh, a former head of mortgage operations at ICS Building Society, told the hearing the inbox of an ex-employee had been inspected.
“There were images of children I did not feel were appropriate,” she said. “I found it shocking . . . some I found disturbing.”
Ms Keogh was speaking during the case of Sarah Rooney (25), Ballybrack, Co Dublin, and Sarah Murray (25), Glasthule, Co Dublin, who say they were unfairly dismissed by ICS Building Society in 2009.
Their representative Kevin D’Arcy said the circulation of such e-mails was endemic in the office and his clients did not realise they could lose their jobs for breaching the company’s e-mail guidelines. He alleged his clients were victims of a “culling” of staff, especially among junior female employees.
Tom Mallon, for Bank of Ireland, said the claimants had circulated “extreme and revolting pornography” to persons within and outside the bank and were guilty of “multiple breaches” of policy and gross misconduct.
Ms Keogh said she believed a core group of those sharing the material in the office may have become “a bit desensitised” to it. She said one of the images in which the eyes of a child had been blacked out, was “sinister”. Of the second, she said: “If it was my child I wouldn’t be happy with it.”
The tribunal heard Ms Rooney and Ms Murray were among five staff dismissed from the ICS mortgage department following an investigation into the circulation of inappropriate e-mails.
Mr D’Arcy argued the investigation was “flawed” as ICS had breached its code of conduct in handling the cases of his clients. He said they had been placed on leave before the report into the e-mail investigation was completed and that perhaps Ms Keogh had made up her mind already.
She denied the suggestion and said deciding how to deal with the matter was one of the most difficult challenges she had faced in her career to that point.
Harry Kane, a mortgage operations manager at ICS who inspected the inboxes of more than 30 staff as part of the investigation, said he found some of the content to be “obscene”, “rude” and “indecent”. He said inappropriate content appeared in nine of them. The hearing continues.
