Brendan Leahy loses unfair dismissal claim after sexual assault case

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The Workplace Relations Commission dismissed former Trinity College Dublin manager Brendan Leahy’s unfair dismissal claim. The ruling was reported on 21 March 2023.

Adjudicator David James Murphy found that Trinity had substantive grounds to dismiss Leahy in November 2021. He said there were flaws in the college’s process, but they had caused no actual unfairness.

On 24 March 2021, Leahy pleaded guilty at Dublin District Court to sexually assaulting a woman at Kehoe’s Pub in Dublin in June 2018. He received a three-month prison sentence, suspended in full, and a €1,000 fine. The District Court also required him to complete a sex offenders’ course and pay compensation.

Leahy appealed his conviction to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, where he was given the benefit of the Probation Act in 2021. He argued that the college investigation should have stopped because the charge and conviction no longer existed. Trinity argued that the charge remained proven and his guilty plea stood.

Leahy said he had been advised to plead guilty and that doing so would save the woman from returning to Ireland to give evidence. He said he had expected the District Court to apply the Probation Act and was ashamed and shocked that the case was going to court.

The disciplinary process also considered an allegation by a former employee, identified as Ms X, that Leahy mimed an oral sex gesture at her at a 2017 Christmas party. Murphy said Trinity was entitled to consider his failure to give advance warning of the court case as misconduct. He said a major aspect of the dismissal decision was Leahy’s failure to take ownership or show remorse for his actions towards both women; Leahy believed his dismissal was preordained.