Sir, - It was with great surprise that I read the letter (October 6th) from RTE's director-general concerning my client Emer Woodfull and the settlement that was reached with RTE following her bullying complaint against the director of radio, Ms Helen Shaw.
It is untrue to say that the money paid to Ms Woodfull was "wholly within the guidelines applying to other RTE personnel". The payment was made with my client's written agreement and it was made "in full and final settlement of all outstanding matters pertaining to her employment with RTE".
Prior to settlement I had prepared writs for bullying and defamation. With RTE's new version of events, however, I now happily find myself free to issue and serve these writs.
Mr Collins refers to the "appropriately constituted inquiry" Ms Woodfull pursued, and stated that "the matter was closed". As Mr Collins knows, RTE refused to allow the matter to be appealed to an independent third party, even though its own literature allows for an appeal.
As a result of the unfair way the NUJ viewed the process to have operated in Ms Woodfull's case, it withdrew from any future such procedures, and indeed my client's NUJ chapel voted unanimously to say that they believed "the findings of the internal tribunal did not reflect the reality of Ms Woodfull's situation", that "the public statement issued by RTE when this became public did not reflect the truth of the case . . . and that the manner in which the case was dealt with undermines our confidence in the bullying procedure in RTE." - Yours, etc.,
Manus McClafferty, Solicitor, Dublin 8.