Whistleblower stuck in employment limbo

JOHN Forde’s life is stuck in an absurd limbo. A stark illustration of this can be seen from the payslips he still receives from the Cork Education and Training Board (CETB). Every fortnight they arrive in the post, listing his annual salary of €70,036, his tax rate and all the usual details.

But for years now, the most important column – his takehome pay for the period – is listed as €0.00.

It’s been like that ever since shortly after he was ordered to leave his desk in May 2019 – three weeks before his retirement date.

‘I went out to my car in bits,’ Mr Forde told the Irish Mail on Sunday this week. ‘That was it. I came home and I have not been near the place since.’

His plight is unique but until now he has resisted advice to go public.

‘My union rep wanted me to go public with this, but I said no. I came in here in 1983 – there wasn’t a job to be had anywhere – and I’ve had 40 years really good pay. Why would I do something that nasty?’

Now, as far as the system is concerned, Mr Forde remains an employee and therefore cannot receive social welfare – or a medical card – even though he is not in receipt of any pay.

Meanwhile, his CETB pension is on hold pending a resolution to a case about the matter he has taken to the High Court. Aged 69 – and suffering from third stage liver cancer – Mr Forde should be well retired and receiving a pension after an almost 40-year career with successive State bodies.

This should have amounted to a lump of about €100,000 and an annual pension of €35,000.

Instead, he’s lost his health and any means of supporting his 56-yearold wife, Christina, who has had to give up work to be his home carer.

‘We have nothing left,’ Christina said. ‘We lost everything.’

At its worst, Mr Forde considered ending it all as the pressure and stress from the ongoing saga threatened to overwhelm him.

In December 2019, he was admitted to the Mental Health Unit at Cork University Hospital for 10 days, though he has since recovered with the help of antidepressants and therapy.

His career as a public servant began in 1983 with State training agency AnCo, which was later subsumed into FÁS.

In 2013 FAS was disbanded in the wake of spending and junket scandals and Mr Forde was moved to the CETB.

During his career, Mr Forde has been trained to be a training instructor and a building surveyor.

The State also paid for him to do a degree in health and safety. For his thesis he focused on the dangers of asbestos.

On top of his official job, Mr Forde is well known for having run a local charity for years that brought Cork tradesmen to Romania to renovate orphanages.

Today, though, he is close to penniless and on the verge of losing his home, amidst an ongoing dispute with the CETB, which began when he made a 2017 protected disclosure to the HSA about asbestos in a local school. According to a High Court affidavit lodged for his case, Mr Forde was allegedly sidelined and ultimately taken off the payroll after he ignored alleged orders to keep the asbestos problem quiet.

The CETB denies any wrongdoing but has made a settlement offer, which Mr

Forde has refused.

Speaking this week, Mr Forde told how the alleged harassment included the repeated hanging of a noose in the storeroom he was allocated as an office.

On other occasions, he found toy guns or petrol cans with burnt matches left on his desk and the word ‘hangman’ was scrawled on his car.

‘This had been happening over years,’ he said. ‘I’m so used to it I don’t really care. I probably should be afraid but I’m not.’

Mr Forde said he learned his principles from his grandmother – Mary Francis Hegarty – whose photo hangs proudly on his sitting room wall as he speaks.

A founding member of

Cumann na mBan, she famously helped capture a British navy vessel and its cargo of arms in 1922. He is proud of this legacy, which has inspired him to stay strong in doing what he believes is right.

‘I’m probably wrong in that

I’ve destroyed my life – and her life,’ he said, nodding towards his wife.

‘But I did what I believed in, so I have no regrets. My only concern is that Christina is taken care of.’