A Workplace Relations Commission official sparked off a “witch hunt” after producing statistics in an equality claim suggesting he had more success mediating between workers and employers than three female colleagues promoted ahead of him, his lawyer has said.
The head of the WRC’s mediation division has told a hearing she suspected a data breach because it does not routinely keep a tally of the success rates of its mediators.
However, she said the figures were “95%” accurate.
Sylda Langford was giving evidence at a WRC hearing into complaints brought by WRC adjudicator Seamus Clinton under the Employment Equality Act 1998, the Protection of Employees (Provision of Information and Consultation) Act 2006, and the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 against the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.
Mr Clinton and another adjudicator, Andrew Heavey, were among ten applicants – five men and five women – to apply for three senior posts as regional managers overseeing the WRC’s conciliation and mediation services (CAMS) in October 2024, the tribunal has heard.
Only one of the men was shortlisted, and three women were ultimately appointed, according to data obtained by Mr Clinton when he initiated an equality case.
His claim is that he suffered less favourable treatment when he was not shortlisted for interview – and that that this may have been whistleblower penalisation, gender discrimination, or penalisation for acting as a staff representative in a campaign for a pay boost for adjudicators.
While his case was at hearing, Mr Clinton referred a further complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998 alleging that he was penalised for pursuing an equality claim when mediation work was withdrawn from him earlier this year.
The State has said Mr Clinton’s access to a key mediation database had to be cut off to shield service users from a suspected data breach after his legal team included statistics drawn from a WRC mediation database in legal filings.
The papers, filed the day before Mr Clinton’s case opened in public on 19 December last year, included percentage “success rates” at mediation in 2024 for the WRC adjudicators who had gone for the regional manager jobs.
The tribunal heard that in these figures, a successful mediation was determined as one which had the status of “resolved”, meaning that there was an agreed outcome.
Mr Heavey – who told the WRC he put the figures together – had achieved agreed resolutions to employment disputes in 67% and Mr Clinton 59%, according to the legal submission.
One of those appointed to a regional manager post had a 47% success rate, while the other two were also lower than Mr Clinton’s figure, the submission added.
It was argued on behalf of Mr Clinton that the figures were inconsistent with the outcome of the promotion competition.
Ms Langford, the director of conciliation and mediation at the WRC, said she feared the figures quoted in Mr Clinton’s legal papers pointed to a data breach at the agency.
“That is not a metric we measure, whether a mediator successfully resolves a mediation. It’s not a meaningful statistic for us – the primary objective of our services is to direct cases away from adjudication,” she said.
To produce the statistics had required the processing of “personal sensitive data” relating to parties in confidential mediation, including the identities of complainants, respondents, and the nature of the case being taken, Ms Langford said.
“That’s why I believed there’d been a data breach,” she said.
She confirmed that she wrote to Mr Clinton revoking his access to a WRC database on 23 December 2025. This was an “immediate action to mitigate the data breach” until she had an understanding of how it occurred, she said.
She denied it was penalisation. She said Mr Clinton’s database access was restored on 23 January 2026.
Mr Clinton’s barrister, Michael Kinsley BL, put it to her that it was not until April 2026 that his client was assigned to mediation work again.
Ms Langford said there had been no mediation referral to Mr Clinton’s office in Carlow until February and that this had been assigned to the other official in the office.
Mr Kinsley pointed out that Mr Clinton could also handle online mediation work.
Ms Langford said her admin team was responsible for scheduling and all officials doing mediation “go into the mix” for those, with full-time mediators having priority.
Mr Heavey said: “When I went into the [database] page that showed everything, all I had to do was count what was there.”
In cross-examination counsel for the State, Stephen Hanaphy BL, put it to Mr Heavey that the percentages “weren’t available” to the interview panel.
Mr Heavey replied: “Of course they were, they were available to everyone. Come 2025, they weren’t.”
Mr Kinsley said that by not producing any witnesses who sat on the interview panel, the State faced an “insurmountable” obstacle in its defence.
“It was a witch hunt, it was a method by which Mr Clinton was going to be retaliated against,” counsel said of the actions of the WRC in relation to the statistics.
Mr Hanaphy said it seemed to be “a pretty short hunt” as the database access had been cut off for just one calendar month spanning Christmas.
He noted Mr Kinsley had described the response of the State to the case as “dismissive and haughty”.
“I’d like to see that and raise that by saying my friend’s client’s attitude was hubristic and chauvinistic,” Mr Hanaphy said.
Presiding adjudicator Brian Dalton has concluded the hearings and will give his decision in due course.
