The High Court has set aside a decision by the Data Protection Commissioner that a hospice did not breach data protection law when information from CCTV footage was used in disciplinary proceedings against an employee.
In a judgment delivered on 21 February 2020, Ms Justice Hyland found that the footage had been collected for security purposes but that information derived from it was also used to investigate alleged unauthorised breaks. That was further processing for a different purpose, the court held. The judgment concerned an appeal on a point of law under section 26 of the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003.
The case arose after threatening graffiti was found in a staff room at Our Lady’s Hospice and Care Services in November 2015. Following Garda advice, two hospice managers viewed CCTV footage once to identify people who had accessed the room. The employee, Cormac Doolin, was among those shown entering it.
The hospice later investigated both the graffiti and staff access to the room at unauthorised times. Its investigation report recorded CCTV-derived entry and exit times for Doolin and concluded, on the balance of probabilities, that he had taken unauthorised breaks on three afternoons. The report recommended a disciplinary hearing. The judgment said the outcome of that hearing was not in the evidence before the court, although submissions indicated that Doolin received a minor sanction.
The Commissioner had rejected Doolin’s complaint, reasoning that the images were viewed only for the security investigation and were not viewed again or downloaded for disciplinary use. The Circuit Court dismissed his appeal after accepting the Commissioner’s later argument that the disciplinary action itself served a security purpose.
Justice Hyland overturned that result. She found no evidence supporting the claim that the disciplinary use was for security purposes, noting that the hospice’s contemporaneous report treated the breaks as a disciplinary matter and did not describe them as a security concern. The court also held that using information obtained from the footage counted as processing under the Act, even though the footage itself was not viewed again.
The High Court allowed the appeal and set aside the Commissioner’s conclusion that no contravention of section 2(1)(c)(ii) had occurred. It did not make a separate finding on the ultimate lawfulness of the hospice’s conduct. After a costs hearing on 25 February 2020, the parties agreed that the matter would not be remitted to the Commissioner, and an order was made in the terms of the court’s conclusions.