The High Court refused the remaining reliefs sought by prison officer David McDonald in two judicial review cases concerning temporary transfer decisions and the handling of bullying complaints. The court did not decide whether the bullying allegations were true or assess their merits.
The first transfer decision, made on 24 August 2018, was quashed by the High Court on 9 October 2018 after the Irish Prison Service accepted that McDonald had not been given an opportunity to make submissions about whether he should be transferred or where. A fresh process followed. In December 2018, the Prison Service notified him of a second proposed temporary transfer pending the outcome of the complaints process.
That transfer did not take place. After McDonald returned to work in December, the two officers who had made complaints agreed to work on the opposite side of the roster. The Prison Service then decided in February 2019 that transferring McDonald was no longer necessary. The court had already treated his application to stop the second transfer as moot.
Justice Ní Raifeartaigh held that the challenges to the transfer decisions and the procedures leading to them were moot because neither transfer would be implemented. The court therefore expressed no view on the procedures used to reach either transfer decision.
The remaining claims concerned the preliminary stage under the Prison Service’s Dignity at Work policy. A designated person interviewed McDonald and the two complainants, recorded that he disputed their accounts, and recommended mediation for one complaint and further investigation for the other. The judge said this was an information-gathering and options stage, not a full investigation or adjudication of the allegations.
The court rejected McDonald’s procedural complaints about that stage. It found that he had been invited to correct the meeting notes within seven days but did not do so, and that the reports recorded his denial of the allegations. The judge also declined to grant a declaration over the delay in appointing an investigator, noting that the policy described its timelines as guides and that the external appointment involved procurement steps. The court did not determine the truth of either complaint.
McDonald’s claim for damages also failed. The judge concluded that he had not established an unlawful or invalid decision by the designated person, a necessary first step for the damages claim as presented. The court refused the reliefs sought.