A solicitor at the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) who claimed he was denied the chance to prepare a murder case for the State as an act of discrimination linked to his drinking problem has lost his equality case.
Complaints by prosecuting solicitor Michael Murphy under the Employment Equality Act 1998 were rejected in a decision published by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Tuesday.
At hearings in March, the WRC was told Mr Murphy spent time in residential treatment for alcoholism in January and February 2019 – disclosing the condition for the first time to his line manager when they met a day after he returned to work after his treatment.
He had been a prosecutor for about two years by that point, having joined the DPP in 2002 and qualified as a solicitor in 2017.
RM Block
He said he never kept his alcoholism a secret and believed senior management in the DPP became aware of it, even though the tribunal heard his initial absence for treatment was recorded officially as being for “undisclosed” reasons.
Part of Mr Murphy’s case was related to his failed attempts going back to February 2021 to secure a transfer out of the DPP’s District Court section – described by one witness as being like an “A&E”.
Mr Murphy said his medication had to be increased “to deal with the stress and anxiety” of District Court work and he had to periodically take time off work to cope.
Mr Murphy’s legal team said the DPP had responded “lamentably” to his condition: alcoholism, with comorbidities of anxiety and depression, it was submitted.
Mr Murphy’s evidence was that he decided to be more “forthright” about certain work issues in January 2022, and that he took issue with the share of work he was being assigned, preparing books of evidence for cases being referred to the Central Criminal Court.
Kiwanna Ennis, for the director, said there were 20 to 25 prosecutors in the section and 40 to 60 books of evidence to prepare for the Central Criminal Court each year.
She asked Mr Murphy whether he was taking issue with being assigned one to three rape cases a year. Mr Murphy said he considered that “still quite low”.
He said he had never been assigned “a murder book” and that was still the case in January 2023, when a prosecutor with eight months’ experience assigned to him for mentoring was tasked with preparing the book of evidence for a murder case.
“You’re concluding that was because of your alcoholism?” asked Ms Ennis.
“No other reason has been given to me,” Mr Murphy said.
Declan Keating, who was the head of the District Court section in the DPP from April 2022 to May 2024, said: “The majority of prosecutors in the section were not assigned a murder trial. Many were not even assigned files for the Central Criminal Court.”
In her decision, adjudication officer Catherine Byrne ruled that Mr Murphy was not treated less favourably.
“In the main, the complainant’s allegations are speculative and based on a lack of trust in his managers and in the organisation overall,” she wrote.
On the claim that Mr Murphy was denied reasonable accommodation by not getting a transfer out of the District Court section, the adjudicator wrote Mr Murphy had never gone to a manager and said he needed a move because he was finding it hard to manage his conditions.
