Monday 27 July 2009

Civil (no)Service employee awarded €40,000

Interesting story in Liam Fay’s Sunday Times column yesterday about a civil servant, Tom Barrett, who was awarded €40,000 by the Equality Tribunal because “he had no work to do since 2005”.

It seems that Barrett, an assistant principal with the Department of Defence, made a complaint about bullying against a supervisor, which was subsequently dismissed. Since then, it seems that he was victimised, and was sent to an “unoccupied office” in Galway, where “he was given precisely nothing to do”.

The Department claimed his exile to what was effectively paid redundancy was an attempt to treat him fairly, as he could not work under the supervisor against whom he had made the complaint.

Nice work, eh?


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6 comments:

Ella said...

Hi GM, I bet you wished you'd bothered with Irish at school so you could apply for one of these paid presences, I mean what else would you call it. You'd have to wonder how many other public servants are in the same position. A great use of our taxes, not.

Anonymous said...

I dont think "having Irish" would be sufficent to get GM into the civil service.

Membership of FF is also a qualification (allegedly of course)

And while on the face of it this might be easier than passing Irish one never really knows when they might need their self respect again !

The Gombeen Man said...

Ah now, I do have my principles folks!

Harry said...

Sometimes I think that this whole 'Public Sector Pay and Conditions v. Private Sector Pay and Conditions' is a big ruse dreamt up by our politicians to keep the electorate squabbling so that they can take the heat off their own ridiculous pay and conditions.

Then I read something like this.

It's worth bearing in mind that the public sector includes Doctors, Nurses, Gardai, Firemen... I don't see anyone having an issue with the work that they do or what they get paid for it. If someone's going to do a cardiac surgery on me I want him to be bloody well paid. However, then there are lots of guys like the ones above who's reason for existence seems to be to screw as much out of the system as possible, waste of public money bedamned.

It's interesting to note as well that the Bord Snip report reccomends cutting 1,140 people from Department of Agriculture. As someone who's seen first hand the amount of waste that the Dept of Ag propagates in terms of red tape and wrong headed decisions I'm not in the least bit surprised.

A short story: I was visiting a politician a few months back who is based in the Dept of Ag (a lot of the newer politicians have been moved out as there are not enough offices for all the TD's and Senators: I could come up with a better solution...)

Anyway, my meeting was at 9.30 and the place was as quiet as a morgue. I saw four other people (including the politician, the security guard and the politicians secretary!) as I walked through the building. As I left at 10.30 people were starting to drift in. According to the politician and his secretary the culture is strictly drift in, drift out, read the papers and hypothesise about new ways to 'monitor' farmers.

We need a revolution to get this country back in order...

Das.Ding said...

Where do i apply?

Lew said...

I want to go back to school, I'd willingly put up with having Irish drummed into me again, I'd take notice this time

It would be worth it for a job that's guaranteed, good money, good benefits, and best of all not only getting paid to do no work at all but getting €40,000 as a bonus just for doing no work.

What idiot would actually complain about being paid to do nothing? I sure wouldn't.

even better what idiot would pay the idiot €40,000 for complaining he had no work!


Some people have no idea how lucky they are.