Employees need to be clear that any claim that they wish to advance under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 will fail unless they can show that the penalisation or dismissal about which they complain occurred as a direct consequence of having made a protected disclosure.
The employee is not protected by this Protected Disclosures Act 2014 simply because he claims to have made a protected disclosure.
Because it may well be the case that an employee is disciplined or dismissed for reasons wholly unconnected to any alleged protected disclosure-for example, conduct, competence, performance, redundancy.
Both the Labour Court and Workplace Relations Commission confirmed this was the case in a case involving a civil servant in Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection v Hosford.
Hosford claimed that he had been penalised by the Department for having made a protected disclosure in the workplace. The Department denied this was the case and said he had been disciplined for alleged disruptive behaviour, failing to follow reasonable directions, and failing to follow the practices and procedures in the workplace.
Hosford’s claim at the WRC failed and he appealed this decision to the Labour Court. The Labour Court held that making a protected disclosure “does not immunise” and employee from the normal disciplinary procedure in the workplace.
The Labour Court found
The fact of a person having made a protected disclosure within the meaning of the Act of 2014 does not immunise the Appellant from a disciplinary response to behaviours which would ordinarily cause an employer to consider the initiation of such procedures provided such behaviours are not in themselves protected disclosures or arising in the course of making protected disclosures. In this case the Court finds that the behaviours which grounded the initiation of disciplinary procedures were not protected disclosures or arising from the making of such disclosures.
Conclusion
Making a protected disclosure is sometimes used by an employee in reliance on the significant protections afforded to employees by the Protected Disclosures Act 2014. But the employee cannot use it as a sword or a shield if there is some other reason(s) as to why the employee is facing an investigation or a disciplinary procedure.
You need to be clear, too, about the significant difference between what constitutes a protected disclosure-relevant wrongdoing-and a grievance about shoddy, but not unlawful, work practices.