The High Court awarded a detective sergeant €195,023.14 after finding that three threats connected to his Garda work caused post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The award included compensation for pain and suffering, loss of promotion opportunity and agreed pecuniary losses. The court rejected a separate claim for coronary treatment costs.
Mr Justice Bernard Barton delivered the judgment on 31 July 2018 in three compensation proceedings heard together under the Garda Síochána (Compensation) Acts 1941–1945. The respondent, the Minister for Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, accepted that the incidents involved malice, but disputed the extent of the injuries and the losses claimed.
The incidents began in October 2000, when a prisoner threatened to have the detective shot after assaulting him. In 2001, Garda intelligence identified him as the target of a further threat involving an alleged offer to pay an assassin. In August 2005, he was told that a murder suspect had allegedly offered €15,000 to have him killed. That November, his then spouse found a shotgun cartridge on the family car outside their home. The family was relocated and the home placed under Garda surveillance. The detective later moved to Mayo.
The judgment records that threats and further intimidation during the 2009 murder trial, at which the detective was a prosecution witness, worsened his psychological symptoms. Medical evidence included a psychologist’s records from the year after the first threats and later assessments and treatment. The respondent’s psychiatrist disputed that the detective had PTSD, including because he continued working. The judge accepted the medical evidence for the detective and found, on the balance of probabilities, that PTSD resulted from each incident.
The judge also considered the detective’s credibility, including inaccurate health declarations on an application for an overseas EULEX posting in Kosovo. He found that the detective had given truthful evidence overall, while noting that longstanding grievances and other factors unrelated to the incidents affected his promotion decisions. The court therefore did not find that he would have been promoted but for his injuries alone. It awarded €85,000 for loss of opportunity, finding that his psychological injuries had significantly contributed to decisions not to pursue or proceed with promotion opportunities.
The detective had coronary artery disease and argued that stress from the PTSD contributed to it. The court found that PTSD was one factor among several, with genetic predisposition the most significant, but held that the evidence could not establish a percentage attributable to the incidents. It therefore disallowed the coronary-related pecuniary claim.
The final award was €100,000 for pain and suffering, €85,000 for loss of opportunity and €10,023.14 in agreed pecuniary losses, totalling €195,023.14. The court ordered judgment for that amount. The source gives an earlier agreed-loss figure of €10,023.47, while the final ruling states €10,023.14.