A veteran Bus Éireann employee blocked from seeking medical retirement because he was taking a personal injuries case, claiming he was injured by decades of using power tools on the job, has been awarded €40,000 for penalisation.
George Moloney secured the compensation at the Workplace Relations Commission on foot of a finding that he was penalised in breach of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005.
The tribunal also ordered the company to let Mr Moloney progress his application to retire on medical grounds after over 40 years’ service as a coachbuilder in its workshops.
Mr Moloney started at the national coach operator in 1984 as an apprentice and spent his career refurbishing vehicles, the tribunal heard.
It was “physically demanding work” with “extensive” use of power tools like air saws and pneumatic knives, Mr Moloney said in evidence to a hearing earlier this month.
In 2023, he was diagnosed with a hand condition “attributable to prolonged exposure to vibrating tools” at work, he said. Bus Éireann’s own occupational health team had said the hand condition was consistent with this mechanism of injury, he added.
At that point, the company agreed to either find him an alternative job or consider retiring him on the grounds of ill health, he said.
Because of the state of his hand, Mr Moloney was deemed medically unsuitable for a transfer to working as a bus driver, the tribunal recorded.
His solicitors wrote to the company on 10 August 2023 setting out his position that requiring him to use vibrating tools over a prolonged period amounted to an “unsafe system of work”, he told the commission.
After that, Mr Moloney said, there was “little engagement” from Bus Éireann.
The tribunal was told last month that a High Court personal injury case concerning liability for the alleged injuries was ongoing.
A Bus Éireann manager accepted he informed the complainant that his medical retirement application would not proceed independently of the personal injury claim.
Bus Éireann’s head of employee relations, Graham Fagan, argued the WRC could not consider the case because of overlap with the High Court case.
Ronan Cunningham of Hamilton Turner Solicitors, for Mr Moloney, said they were distinct matters and only the WRC could consider the penalisation complaint.
Adjudicator Úna Glazier-Farmer agreed, and also turned down a Bus Éireann motion seeking an adjournment – the company having told the WRC it had been unable to secure legal representation because of the court holidays.
Ms Glazier-Farmer ruled the legal letter sent in August 2023 constituted a protected act under workplace health and safety law.
By denying Mr Moloney access to the usual ill-health retirement process because of the live High Court Case, he had been subjected to an “obvious” and “significant” financial detriment, the adjudicator wrote.
She concluded there was a causal link between the protected act and the detriment, and that Mr Moloney had therefore been penalised.
“While it is not possible to conclude that the complainant would ultimately have been granted ill-health retirement, he was denied the opportunity to have his case considered in accordance with the respondent’s own procedures,” she wrote.
Upholding the complaint, she ordered Bus Éireann to pay €40,000 in compensation.
Ms Glazier-Farmer further directed Bus Éireann to process Mr Moloney’s application for medical retirement “without regard to the existence of any civil proceedings” within 10 weeks.
