'I was too honest': Garda whistleblower says she was bullied after revealing homicide data errors

Ryan Dunne

Garda whistleblower Lois West has said she felt like “a severed limb” who had just been “cut off” by her superiors after she raised her head “above the parapets” and testified to the Oireachtas about errors in homicide data.

“They never wanted me back, I was too honest, I had too much integrity,” Ms West told the Workplace Relations Commission on Thursday, where she spoke about the “undermining, belittling and bullying" she suffered after she and a colleague, garda analyst Laura Galligan, went public on the misclassification of homicides in Garda records in testimony to the Oireachtas Justice Committee in March 2018.

West is pursuing complaints under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014, the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 and the Payment of Wages Act 1991 against the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána, the government, and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

West was joint deputy head of the Garda Síochána Analysis Service (GSAS) at assistant principal grade prior to taking extended sick leave.

At the beginning of her case last November, the complainant said that a probe was opened in 2016 after Galligan began to compare records on the Garda PULSE database dating from 2013 to 2015 to the records of the Chief State Pathologist, having been asked to provide data on domestic homicides.

West said there were 16 cases which were recorded by gardaí on PULSE as “something other than homicide” which “absolutely needed to be reclassified”, and others with “very glaring data quality issues”.

A barrister acting for West said she has been subject to a “stream of penalisation” ever since she and Galligan first raised concerns about homicides being “misclassified” by the force.

At the resumed hearing of her case against the State on Thursday, West said that there had been plans to expand the GSAS to meet the needs of An Garda Síochána. She said that she understood that the top position in the GSAS would be subject to advertisement and competition, but this did not happen.

“There were conversations and discussions ongoing that I wasn’t privy to, even though I was part of the management team,” she said, adding that it was a surprise to her when she learnt that her colleague, Sarah Parsons, who was joint deputy head of GSAS with West, was going to be put into the role of Principal Officer.

She said that when she learned that Parsons had been promoted, “everything crystalised for me”.

“It had a terrible, detrimental effect on me, as my worst fears were being realised that I was being written out. There were active attempts to prevent me from moving forward in my career,” she said, adding that she became very emotional and “broke down”.

She said she was never shown any documentation as to how Parson got into that role, and there was no advertisement for the position.

“I had no opportunity to compete to fill that one and only vacancy,” the complainant said.

She said that the GSAS was described as “the jewel in the crown of civilianisation,” so it was very important that the right people were tested for available roles.

“This was absolutely devastating for me. From August 2007, my colleague and I were on a level playing field as two deputy heads of the service,” she said.

West said that after she made her disclosures about the misclassification of homicides, she was subjected to “undermining, belittling and bullying". She said that she went back to work and “struggled on”, before her face broke out in “a very severe case of perioral dermatitis”.

“I realised if I keep going the way I am going, I am not going to survive this,” West said, explaining that she was on antibiotics for three months and had to go to her GP as her mouth was so ulcerated she couldn’t swallow due to extreme pain.

“This only started after I raised my head above the parapets about the homicides,” she said. “Never was my work in question and still isn’t. But once I put my head above the parapets, everything changed,” she said; adding: “I was trying to pick myself up and carry on, but I wasn’t mentally fit.”

She said that Parsons’ promotion came “out of the blue,” and no documentation was given to her to make the situation any clearer about this appointment.

“I have so many feelings and emotions around the whole thing. The best way I can describe it is I feel like a severed limb, I’ve just been cut off,” she said.

“There was a time when I was having emotional mental breakdowns and at no point did anybody say, ‘stop the train here, this lady needs to get off’,” West told the hearing.

“I’m getting through this on medication; the only reason I can sit here is because I’m taking medication, at no point did anybody care about me.”

West said that she learnt Parsons had been promoted to the role of Principal Officer (PO) and was informed that another PO role was to be filled, then a director role. She said that Parsons subsequently became director, but the additional PO role was not advertised prior to this director role coming into existence.

"Nobody has communicated anything to me in any formal way,” she said, adding that she believed there is currently only one PO role, which she thought was recruited for in 2024.

“I received nothing in relation to when the PO role was advertised. I struggle with that, because you read it and it’s my role,” she said.

West said that in December 2020, she went out on sick leave as she was under “tremendous pressure in the workplace and not fit to be there”. She said she visited her GP and remains under the care of a psychiatrist.

She told the hearing that she heard “absolutely nothing” from her employer about getting back to work and she had not received sick pay. She said that her pay status has been “zero since September 2022” and she has no income.

West said she tried to return to work in February 2021, but after one day back at work, she was “in emotional distress” and spent 12 hours crying.

She said that she had no awareness of the area of occupational sick pay, but had she been told by her employer about it and if granted it, she might not have felt obliged to return to work.

“I felt I was a persona non grata because of the issues I raised. My career was flourishing until November 2016, but after that it all began to fall apart. I was being viewed as a problem child,” she said.

She went on to say: “They never wanted me back, I was too honest, I had too much integrity.”

She said she signed off from work again on February 2, 2021, meaning she was back at work for just one day.

David Byrnes, appearing instructed by Felix McTiernan of Noble Law, is representing West in the case. The state counsel are Lorna Lynch and Niall Fahey, instructed by Joseph Dolan of the Chief State Solicitor’s Office.

The case is continuing on Friday before adjudication officer Penelope McGrath.