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Boxing coach Pete Taylor seeks damages from council for being locked out of gym

Boxing coach Pete Taylor has issued proceedings against a local authority seeking injunctions and damages after being locked out of the premises where he ran a successful club.

Wicklow County Council took possession of Bray Boxing Club in June last year after a shooting incident in which a gym member was killed and two others, including Mr Taylor, were injured.

Mr Taylor, who is the father and former coach of world lightweight champion Katie Taylor, initiated High Court proceedings earlier this month after efforts to regain use of the council-owned premises proved fruitless.

According to legal papers seen by the Irish Independent, the council is being sued by Mr Taylor and his company, Bray Boxing Club Ltd.

The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction compelling the council to allow Mr Taylor to re-enter the premises on foot of a number of licence agreements, the most recent of which dates from 2014. Injunctions will also be sought restraining the council from selling or leasing the building or items Mr Taylor says he owns that remain at the premises.

These include a large amount of gym equipment and valuable items of sentimental value. Items belonging to other club members are also said to remain at the Harbour Road facility.

Mr Taylor, who is represented by Robinson O’Neill Solicitors, is also seeking damages, claiming the council has intentionally interfered with his economic interests.

He declined to comment when contacted by the Irish Independent.

The matter has yet to be scheduled for a court hearing.

Katie Taylor won 18 major gold medals while she was a member of the club. Its premises underwent a major renovation after she became an Olympic champion in 2012.

Innocent father-of-three Bobby Messett was shot dead at the gym on June 5 last year.

Mr Taylor and another man were also shot and injured. There is no suggestion Mr Taylor or the other men shot had any involvement in crime.

A man is awaiting trial over Mr Messett’s murder.

Shortly after the shooting, the council released a statement saying it had secured the building and was making arrangements to examine it and undertake necessary repairs. However, the council refused to answer questions about its plans for the premises this week, citing the High Court action.

“As this matter is before the courts, the council is not in a position to comment,” a spokesman said.

Irish Independent

A university is suing another institution it accuses of “poaching” a professor.

The National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) has brought proceedings in the High Court against University College Dublin (UCD) over Professor Kath Browne’s move to UCD.

Prof Browne, the court heard, is a professor of Geographies of Sexualities and Genders.

She joined NUIM following an open competition in 2017.

NUIM claims that last May Prof Browne was approached by UCD and advised to apply for a position with the Dublin college.

She tendered her resignation from NUIM in June 2019 and is expected to take up her new role as a full professor at UCD in September.

The move has resulted in NUIM bringing High Court judicial review proceedings against UCD, which in correspondence has argued the claim is not judicially reviewable.

NUIM, which is represented by Declan McGrath SC, claims it is not trying to prevent Prof Browne from taking up the position at UCD.

But it is seeking various declarations from the court aimed at stopping what it alleges are unlawful practices. NUIM claims Prof Browne was recruited under UCD’s Central Pool Academic Appointments Programme.

It says the programme is used to attract academics who hold academic research grants and are employed by other universities.

In reply to a question from Mr Justice Senan Allen, counsel agreed that his client was claiming its staff member had been “poached” by UCD.

It also claims the mode of the programme under which Prof Browne was recruited involves inviting applicants to send their CV to the relevant head of school in UCD.

Permission for NUIM to bring the action was granted on an ex-parte basis by Mr Justice Allen.

He made the matter returnable to a date in October.

Irish Independent

A traveller woman has been awarded €5,000 after being discriminated against by two Co Galway accommodation providers in the space of a few hours last year.

On February 20, 2018, Geraldine Ward travelled from Dublin to Co Galway to attend her uncle’s funeral in Loughrea.

Ms Ward’s sister had bookings confirmed for the Auld Triangle B&B and the Meadow Court hotel in Loughrea with booking.com.

However, they failed to secure a room and Ms Ward was forced to “freshen up” for the funeral removal in her car.

Ms Ward subsequently took discrimination cases under the Equal Status Act to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), which upheld her discrimination claims, ordering each provider to pay her €2,500.

WRC adjudication officer Ray Flaherty said Ms Ward was discriminated against on the grounds of being a Traveller by the two providers.

Ms Ward’s sister secured a room for the two at the Meadow Court at 5.51pm on February 20 through booking.com after the sisters earlier failed to secure a reserved room through the same website at the Auld Triangle B&B in Loughrea, which had locked entrances when they arrived.

However, when Ms Ward turned up at the hotel reception on the Tuesday evening in February of last year – after coming from the mortuary after her uncle’s removal – a receptionist told them that there had been a mistake and that the hotel was full.

Ms Ward told the WRC hearing that she did not believe that the hotel was fully booked, when there were only six people in the restaurant and very few cars in the car park.

The cases were taken on behalf of Ms Ward by the Connacht Citizens’ Information Service.

In response, a representative for the hotel told the WRC that it uses several websites for booking and that booking.com had oversold its allocation of rooms.

They stated that as the premises does not have high-speed broadband, this can lead to delays in receipt of confirmations. The hotel claimed that it did not discriminate against Ms Ward, pointing out Ms Ward and her sister were served food at the hotel.

In his findings, Mr Flaherty found that on the balance of probabilities, Ms Ward’s booked accommodation with the hotel was cancelled on the basis that she was a member of the Traveller community.

Mr Flaherty also found that Ms Ward was denied access to the B&B for the same reason and has ordered the Auld Triangle to pay her €2,500.

Irish Independent

Debt write-off: How Frank McNamara and Theresa Lowe returned to spotlight for wrong reasons

There was a time when it was hard to avoid seeing Frank McNamara and Theresa Lowe on the television.

As musical director of the ‘Late Late Show’, appearances by Mr McNamara were a staple of Saturday nights.

He was a fixture on the top show at a time when it was broadcast on a Saturday night and had a massive audience.

His wife Theresa Lowe was an entertaining feature of Sunday nights as presenter of the popular quiz show ‘Where in the World?’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Then they faded from our screens.

Mr McNamara went Stateside where he was a musical conductor and composer. Ms Lowe studied to become a barrister at King’s Inn.

They are back in the limelight now, but for all the wrong reasons.

When they ceased to appear on our TV screens the couple pursued other careers, ended up with huge debts and got themselves into serious financial difficulties when they were not able to repay them.

Along the way the couple bought investment properties, while Mr McNamara unsuccessfully tried to become a Progressive Democrats TD.

The debts ended up at around €3.7m in total.

The property bubble bursting and the inability of Mr McNamara to get paid royalties he was owed for musical compositions put paid to their ability to repay their debts.

Court hearings have been told he was owed around €1m in royalties at one stage.

Their main asset is their four-bedroom home in Dunshaughlin, Co Meath.

The couple say the house is worth around half-a-million euro, but owe almost €2.3m on it.

According to the written judgment issued by Mr Justice Denis McDonald yesterday, the couple first found themselves unable to meet their repayments in the early 2000s.

They remortgaged properties and sold others in an attempt to escape what they saw as temporary financial difficulties.

But the debts piled up. The couple, who have two dependant children, also owe €550,000 to Bank of Ireland.

Money owed to Belvedere College, Permanent TSB, Cabot Financial, First Citizen and the Revenue Commissioners is also outlined in court documents.

The mortgage on the couple’s home was part of a tranche of loans sold by Bank of Scotland (Ireland) in 2014. Mr McNamara (59) and Ms Lowe (56) had a poor repayment history, so a vulture fund like Tanager was not willing to accept such a situation.

Tanager ended up getting a possession order for the home.

To avoid losing their home the couple applied for a personal insolvency arrangement (PIA), a formal debt write-off deal that has to be approved by the courts. With a successfully PIA the family home is usually retained.

The PIA was drawn up by personal insolvency practitioner James Green of McCambridge Duffy.

But Tanager was having none of it. It held the largest proportion of the McNamara-Lowe debt with a €2.3m mortgage on the family home. It voted down the PIA proposal put together by Mr Green.

This prompted the couple to use the High Court to enforce the PIA deal.

Tanager opposed this, but yesterday Mr Justice McDonald sided with the couple.

What appears to be an incredible deal will see €2.9m in debts written off, based on the couple’s earning capacity and the value of the home.

The judge agreed with the arguments put forward by barrister Keith Farry that the mortgage on the family home should be written down, subject to clarifications being provided regarding an inheritance.

The couple will hand over €210,000 from an inheritance and a pension.

The judge said it “is a very significant write-down in absolute terms” but was justified on the basis of the current value of the home and current earnings of the couple.

The judge said Tanager would “not be unfairly prejudiced by the proposals”.

The alternative was bankruptcy. In that scenario Tanager would have received 22c in the euro. With the PIA it will get back 27c in the euro, the judge calculated.

Irish Independent

Ballot by pilots was unlawful, Ryanair claims as it seeks order to prevent strike action

Ryanair has argued in Dublin’s High Court that balloted strike action from some of their pilots was unlawful.

The High Court in Dublin heard arguments from a major Irish pilots’ union and Ryanair in a debate over proposed strike action.

The airline is seeking an order against Forsa, which is the parent union of the Irish Airline Pilots Association (Ialpa), in a dispute over pay and conditions.

Forsa is contesting the airline’s application for an injunction preventing around 180 pilots based in Ireland from going on a 48-hour strike from midnight on Thursday.

Justice Denis McDonald began hearing arguments on Monday from Ryanair’s legal representative Martin Hayden SC.

The airline claims strike action would be in breach of an agreement both parties signed up to in the summer of 2018 through mediation in the Workplace Relations Commission through then-chairman Kieran Mulvey.

The airline also argues that Forsa’s ballot and the subsequent notice of strike action was unlawful, and that the 2018 agreement is a “binding conclusion” and “over-arching”.

Mr Hayden told the court that Forsa has not actually quantified what it is claiming for and Ryanair, although “not indisposed to making an offer”, is prevented from doing so in the absence of such a request.

“To make a counter offer you need to have something to counter,” he said.

Justice McDonald disagreed with this assertion, arguing that this is not backed by Mr Mulvey in his report, but Ryanair’s understanding of his report.

“I’m not asking for your understanding, I’m not seeing anything from Mr Mulvey saying Ryanair cannot make a counter proposal without further information from Forsa,” Justice McDonald said.

Mr Hayden said the “damaging strikes” would not only affect Ryanair as a company, but many customers.

“If I could say this, this is ultimately a pay request… that the go-to moment is a strike, it’s a disproportionate response,” he said.

Forsa says 94% of its members who took part in the vote chose to back a strike.

Only pilots directly employed by Ryanair took part in the ballot, with those on agency contracts not eligible to vote.

If strike action does go ahead, only those with Ryanair contracts will take part and pilots on different contracts will continue to work as normal.

It is predicted that any industrial action will cause huge disruption during the busy summer holiday period.

The hearing adjourned late on Monday afternoon and will resume on Tuesday morning, however a judgment is not expected until Wednesday, as Justice McDonald predicted he would need to “reflect” on the matter.

The court will hear arguments from Forsa’s legal representatives on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said on Monday that because Ryanair has “wasted time with unnecessary court action”, their chance to resolve the dispute involving their pilots has been lost.

Ryanair is seeking a High Court injunction on Wednesday to stop strike action by their UK pilots.

Irish Independent

A High Court judge has warned a woman that she could end up back in prison unless she stops posting information about childcare proceedings involving her son on social media.

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has brought High Court judicial review proceedings against orders made in the District Court concerning her own son, who has been placed in the care of the Child and Family Agency (CFA).

It is an offence to identify any person that is the subject of childcare proceedings before the courts.

Today, an application by the CFA to have the woman attached and committed to prison due to her alleged failure to comply with an undertaking she had given to stopping putting material online that identified parties involved in childcare proceedings came before Mr Justice Denis McDonald.

The Judge heard that the woman has already been sent to prison for publishing material online about the childcare proceedings which identify her child.

She had previously given an undertaking not to publish the material, but the court heard she has breached that undertaking on several occasions.

Counsel for the CFA, Ronan Munroe SC, said his client did not want to see the woman jailed but had no alternative other than to take attachment and committal proceedings in light of what was being posted by her on social media.

The woman’s lawyer initially told the court that his client was not willing to remove the material.

However, after a brief consultation with the woman, her solicitor said she was prepared to take down and not post any more material on social media until the matter returns before the court.

breakingnews.ie for full story

The State has been told it must delete data held on 3.2 million citizens, which was gathered as part of the roll-out of the Public Services Card, as there is no lawful basis for retaining it.

In a highly critical report on its investigation into the card, the Data Protection Commission found there was no legal reason to make individuals obtain the card in order to access State services such as renewing a driving licence or applying for a college grant.

While the card will still be sought from people accessing some services directly administered by the Department of Social Protection, such as claiming social welfare payments, the commission’s report represents a major blow to the scope of the project, which has proved politically contentious and faced strong opposition from data-privacy campaigners.

Helen Dixon, the Data Protection Commissioner, told The Irish Times that forcing people to obtain such a card for services other than those provided by the department was “unlawful from a data-processing point of view”.

It has directed that the department cease processing applications for cards needed for such functions.

Ms Dixon said there had been a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what was permitted by the legislation underpinning the card.

She said the department assumed that the legislation included a “legal basis for public sector bodies to mandatorily demand the card, and it doesn’t, once you conduct the legal analysis”.

irishtimes.com for full story

One of the women affected by the CervicalCheck controversy was today Wednesday in the High Court granted leave to serve a personal injuries summons on an American pathology clinic.

Jacqueline Hopkins, of Carn Ard, Circular Road, Galway, was told by Ms Justice Miriam O’Regan that service of the proceedings could be made out of the jurisdiction on Clinical Pathology Laboratories Limited, of Wall Street, Austin, Texas.

Barrister David Browne, who appeared for Ms Hopkins with Peter McDonnell Solicitors, told the court that Clinical Pathology Laboratories was one of five defendants including the HSE, Quest Diagnostics Inc., Medlab Pathology Limited and Sonic Healthcare (Ireland) Limited, being sued by his client.

Her solicitor Peter McDonnell in an affidavit stated that in April 2009 Ms Hopkins had a smear test carried out under CervicalCheck, the National Cervical Screening Programme, as a result of which she had in 2010 undergone a full hysterectomy for a micro invasive cervical carcinoma.

Mr McDonnell, whose company operates out of Capel Building, Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, told the court Ms Hopkins had undergone further smear tests in January 2011 and in February 2012 both of which had been analysed by Clinical Pathology Laboratories Limited.

He said Ms Hopkins claims that Clinical Pathology Laboratories or its agents were guilty of negligence or breach of duty in having failed to prescribe a correct course of treatment and his legal firm believed that Ms Hopkins had a good cause of action against the laboratory and each of the other four defendants.

Judge O’Regan granted Ms Hopkins’ legal team liberty to issue and serve a personal injuries summons on Clinical Pathology Laboratories Limited at its Austin, Texas, headquarters and allowed the company 35 days to enter an appearance.

Online Editors

Facebook risks another spat with European Union privacy watchdogs following reports that the social-media giant paid contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services.

The Data Protection Commission said it is “seeking detailed information from Facebook on the processing in question” after the company confirmed it had been transcribing audio from users in the Messenger app.

The Irish regulator, which takes the lead in overseeing Facebook in Europe, said it’s already looking at similar data processing by Google, Apple and Microsoft.

“We are now seeking detailed information from Facebook on the processing in question and how Facebook believes that such processing of data is compliant with their” obligations under the EU’s privacy rules, the Irish regulator said.

Facebook didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the Irish review. It previously confirmed that it had been transcribing users’ audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies.

Amazon, Google, Apple and now Facebook have come under fire for collecting audio snippets from consumer computing devices and subjecting those clips to human review, a practice that critics say invades privacy.

Human review
Bloomberg first reported in April that Amazon had a team of thousands of workers around the world listening to Alexa audio requests with the goal of improving the software, and that similar human review was used for Apple’s Siri and Alphabet’s Google Assistant. Apple and Google have since said they no longer engage in the practice and Amazon said it will let users opt out of human review.

It’s not just the Irish regulator, where Google, Apple and Facebook have their main EU base, which has started digging deeper into possible privacy violations. Officials in the US and elsewhere in Europe are also probing processing by human reviewers employed to listen to voice commands recorded by digital assistants. – Bloomberg

irishtimes.com

A shop assistant who endured six months of daily sexual harassment, including being called “thunder tits” by her assistant manager, has been awarded €40,000.

The sum is the maximum the woman, who was also physically assaulted, could receive under the Employment Equality Act for sexual harassment.

Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudication officer Marian Duffy, who made the award, said it was applicable “given the inexplicable failure of management to prevent the discriminatory treatment”.

She pointed to the serious nature of the discriminatory treatment the worker was subjected to over a period of six months.

This included being physically assaulted a number of times.

Ms Duffy said the trauma for the worker “of recalling these events was still evident on the day of the hearing, a matter which I also considered in assessing the amount of redress”.

“I found the evidence of the complainant very credible and the respondent did not call any evidence to contradict the complainant’s version of events,” Ms Duffy added.

As a result of the daily sexual harassment, the woman went on certified medical leave in April 2018 and was prescribed anti-depressant medication.

The part-time worker, who was paid €9.35 an hour, did not return to work before resigning in November 2018.

The woman had told the hearing that after she returned to work after maternity leave in November 2017, she was subjected to sexual comments from an assistant manager on a regular basis.

She alleged that the assistant manager stopped calling her by her name and called her “big tits” and later on “thunder tits”. The individual also called her other sexually offensive names.

He called her a ‘thick bitch’, made sexually explicit gestures towards her, made offensive comments about her breasts, asked her to engage in lewd acts and suggested that she provide sexual favours for him in return for keeping her job.

The complainant said she took precautions to avoid the assistant manager hitting her and wore baggy clothes, but this elicited more sexually offensive comments from him.

The worker said she made a formal complaint to the human resources department of the company at the end of April 2018 but alleged she was subject to harassment by other staff members because she had made a complaint.

As part of her order, Ms Duffy directed a revised anti-bullying and harassment policy be given to all the retailer’s staff and management.

Irish Independent