The former national director of Catholic marriage advisory charity Accord
has claimed she was unfairly made redundant after a motion to extend
the full range of couples counselling to divorced, gay and unmarried
people was passed at the organisation’s annual meeting.
Ruth
Barror from Clontarf, Dublin, was employed by Accord, an organisation
set up by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, between October 2008
and January 2012 on a salary of more than €100,000.
Her counsel Síle O’Kelly told an Employment Appeals Tribunal last Thursday Ms Barror was told she was being made redundant because of
financial constraints, but “the real reason for her dismissal” was
because of a motion passed at Accord’s annual meeting in October 2011.
Motion five, originally tabled by the Accord
Wexford centre, proposed to make “the full range of counselling and
therapy services” available to all those seeking them from the
organisation.
Ms O’Kelly claimed Accord president Bishop Christopher
Jones had said if the motion was passed, the organisation would be
closed down.
‘Blackmailed’
‘Blackmailed’
It
was passed by a large majority of the 800 lay delegates at the meeting
and Bishop Jones had felt “intimidated, threatened and blackmailed”, the
tribunal was told.
Motion five was subsequently ruled invalid by the
national executive committee.
Ms O’Kelly said her client had taken wage
cuts and was willing to take more, but her suggestions were rejected.
Tom Mallon, for Accord, said the matter was “a relatively straightforward redundancy”.
Ms
Barror had a three-year fixed-term contract which was extended for
three months and then not renewed, he said. It was “a red herring” to
suggest there had been an ulterior motive.
The organisation relied on
Government funding and it had been subject to cuts of 13 per cent over
the last few years and “simply had to cut back”.
Giving
evidence for Accord, Harry Casey, executive administrator of the
commissions and agencies of the bishops’ conference, told the tribunal
there were eight full-time and eight part-time staff at Accord head
office and Ms Barror had not been replaced.
Sex therapy
Sex therapy
The
national executive committee usually sifted through motions in advance
of the annual meeting to decide if they were operational or a change of
policy, Mr Casey said.
No motion that would amend the constitution of
the organisation could be put at an annual meeting without first being
approved by the Bishops Conference.
The problem
with motion five was that Accord had a difficulty with offering sex
therapy to people who were not married.
They did offer conflict
resolution, addiction and other counselling to unmarried couples, he
said, but did not refer them to psycho-sexual specialists.
The teaching
was clear: “Sex before marriage is not something the Catholic Church
ever promoted”.
He had no memory of any discussion
about motion five at a meeting of the bishop’s conference a month later
at which it was decided Ms Barror should be made redundant.
He admitted
to having avoided her in the days following the decision because he was
embarrassed.
Bishop Jones was “equally upset,
and tense and nervous”, Mr Casey said, and asked him to attend the
meeting with Ms Barror to tell her the bad news on December 16th.
“She
amazed me with her graciousness and strength,” he said.
The case was adjourned until April.