Donegal lifeguard manager sacked over alleged failure to oversee ‘life or death' ringbuoy inspections

"There’s a lot of trust in the job – it’s life or death. Trust had broken down. Thank God there was no open water fatalities in that season that would have left us exposed,” a senior council engineer told the Workplace Relations Commission this week.

He said that beach lifeguards in the county had been given a message that ring-buoy inspections “didn’t matter” and the job of recording their condition in a phone app “wasn’t to be done”.

“It certainly did not come from me,” said former lifeguard supervisor Lisa Dalton, who was dismissed by the county council in November 2021.

Ms Dalton told the WRC she had been out sick with Covid-19 in June and July 2021, and discovered on her return that there had been “no ring-buoy surveys carried out” in her absence, with the exceptions of Rossnowlagh and Bundoran beaches, but her own personal ringbuoy inspections "were completed, 100%".

She told the WRC that the her working relationship with her line manager, the county water safety officer David Friel, was “not easy” – and that she didn’t think her job was on the line when he had her sign a document in November 2021 rating her as “below standard”.

Donegal County Council admitted to the employment tribunal that it could not produce Mr Friel to give evidence in its defence of Ms Dalton’s complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 – nor either of the officials who had made the ultimate decision to dismiss her.

The document was a probation review form, but was presented to the complainant months after an extension to her probation had lapsed in April 2021, the tribunal heard.

At hearing this week, WRC adjudicator Emile Daly said she was “not persuaded” by the argument made by the council’s representative, Keith Irvine of the Local Government Management Agency, stating that the complainant was still on probation at the time of her dismissal and could not be protected by the Unfair Dismissals Act.

The council’s case was that it had notified Ms Dalton of an extension of probation until April 2021 and dismissed her on foot of a “probation review” in November.

Senior council engineer Joe McCarron gave evidence that he had been involved in a series of meetings in January, March and April that year, in order to “try and get improved performance and compliance” in the complainant’s work area.

The tribunal heard there were around 800 life-rings in the county which had to be inspected regularly, with inspections logged to a database using a mobile app – twice a year in the case of quieter locations, but as often as daily at the busiest beaches in Rossnowlagh and Bundoran in high summer.

Ms Dalton had direct responsibility for annual and weekly inspections, though the task was delegated to lifeguards at the manned beaches during the summer months, with fortnightly checks by the lifeguard supervisor, the WRC was told.

“The inspections were said to be done but when the supervisor went to check that, they found that they hadn’t,” Mr McCarron said.

Mr McCarron said the council had concerns that the inspections were not appearing on the app database – and that in response, Ms Dalton had told her boss that she had been taking note of the inspections on old paper forms and that these had “got wet”.

Ms Dalton’s position was that she had been authorised to file paper records on the inspections in 2020 and that even after issues with the app had been “ironed out” the following year, she only had access to the app dashboard to see what the lifeguards were logging once or twice a week when she could use a desktop PC in the council’s offices.

“It was put to her that there was a lot of excuses that the work wasn’t being done. Look, it came down to trust issues. There’s a lot of trust in the job – it’s life or death. Trust had broken down. Thank God there was no open water fatalities in that season that would have left us exposed,” Mr McCarron said.

Cross-examining the witness, Ms Dalton’s trade union rep, Michelle Connaughton of Fórsa, put it to him that there had been “glitches” with the life-buoy app in 2020 and that this was why her client had continued to keep paper records.

“Do you feel secure that the app recorded the correct information,” Ms Connaughton asked.

Mr McCarron said he had been assured by the council’s IT department that “the app was working okay for the vast majority of the time”.

He admitted that he “wasn’t party” to discussions about the ringbuoy inspections in 2020, when Ms Connaughton had written to the council IT department about “glitches in the app”.

In her own evidence, Ms Dalton said she had been told in 2020 “just to go with paper” for the inspections because of issues with the app that the council’s IT department was “trying to iron out”.

“Those were all filed. When I was asked about them I uploaded them in September and October [2020],” she said.

“All my own personal ringbuoy inspections were uploaded onto the app and were completed,” she said of her work in 2021.

The council’s position had been that Ms Dalton had fallen short in making sure beach lifeguards were doing their daily inspections in high season.

Ms Dalton said she had been out sick with Covid-19 in June and July 2021, and discovered on her return that there had been “no ringbuoy surveys carried out” in her absence.

The only exceptions, she said, were at Rossnowlagh and Bundoran, where lifeguards had been in place since earlier in the season.

“In relation to lifeguards’ info, some of them weren’t complete, and that is a fact, but my own personal ringbuoy inspections were completed, 100%,” she said.

Asked by the adjudicating officer whether she had checked on the app dashboard whether beach lifeguards were logging their inspections in the summer of 2021, Ms Dalton said: “No, because I didn’t have access to a laptop or computer and I was out on the road.

"I had asked on a number of occasions for a laptop and it wasn’t provided. I was sharing a [council desktop] PC with a colleague – that was difficult at best,” she said.

She said she got to look at the dashboard “weekly or maybe twice a week” and would have been sending reminder texts to lifeguards on the subject.

She said she was “never” shown data as evidence that she had failed to carry out the inspections – adding that she had agreed a schedule for them with Mr Friel which ought to be “backed up” by her paper timesheets.

The complainant said she didn’t know her job was on the line when she was called to the meeting with Mr Friel on 31 November 2021, which she said lasted just ten minutes.

She said her line manager had called her in with the “flippant” statement: “I must get a meeting with you to get this tied off.”

“I wasn’t told it was a final review. I wasn’t prepared at all for it. It wasn’t an easy working relationship,” she said, adding that she just wanted to get the meeting over and done with at the time.

“If I’d known how it would end I would have had someone there, a representative, or evidence. I could have argued the case,” she said.

The matter has been adjourned for Ms Daly to consider her decision.