The High Court said it would restrain the HSE’s current investigation into five psychiatric nurses assigned to Áras Attracta and prevent further investigations except in accordance with the HSE’s Trust in Care Policy and Disciplinary Procedure. The court did not set out the final terms of the order in this judgment, saying it would hear the parties on those terms.
The interlocutory applications were brought by Lyndsey Conway, Carmel Doherty, Mary Prendergast, Vidhya Maverly and Marie Kilcoyne. They are among 17 staff under investigation over allegations arising from events at the residential home in Swinford, County Mayo. The judgment does not determine whether any allegation against the nurses is true.
The nurses argued that the HSE breached their contractual rights by appointing an investigation team without seeking their agreement and by running Trust in Care and disciplinary investigations in parallel. They sought orders stopping the process and requiring any investigation to follow the agreed procedures. The HSE accepted that it had not followed the procedures, but argued the breach was technical, the nurses had delayed seeking relief, and stopping the work would cause delay and expense.
Justice Murphy found the nurses had made a strong case that both policies formed part of their employment terms. The Trust in Care Policy required investigators to be agreed between the parties, while the disciplinary procedure required investigators acceptable to both sides. The judge said the nurses’ right to input into the investigation panel was a material safeguard for a fair and impartial process. The HSE had not explained why it appointed the team without consulting them.
The court also considered the parallel Stage 4 disciplinary process. The judge said the HSE had not identified precise complaints that justified starting that stage before the Trust in Care process concluded. Running both processes at once could require a nurse to answer additional complaints during an investigation, creating a serious risk of unfairness.
The HSE argued the application came too late. The court rejected that argument, finding the nurses and their union had reasonably tried to resolve the dispute internally. The judgment criticised the HSE’s failure to answer union correspondence promptly and said the delay was not unreasonable. The court did not need to decide the second part of the legal test for delay.
The court found damages would not adequately address potential harm to the nurses’ personal and professional reputations, and concluded the balance of convenience favoured granting interlocutory relief. It did not decide the nurses’ separate fair-procedures claim, saying the relief under other grounds dealt with the matter.
The first and second nurses also sought to have their suspensions lifted, arguing they had not been given an opportunity to make representations. The court declined that request, noting they had been represented at meetings and that the suspensions could be immediately reimposed. The judgment, delivered on 5 February 2016, addresses interim relief pending the substantive action; it does not finally determine the contractual dispute.