Yes, I told a woman I’d kill her dog and said it should be shot
But sacked postman denies using crude language
A FORMER postman has admitted telling a woman he would kill her family dog but denied insulting her, an employment appeals tribunal heard yesterday.
Philip Dwyer, who kicked another dog in the head before taking nine months off sick, has taken a case of unfair dismissal against An Post, which terminated his employment for deriliction of duty.
Mr Dwyer said he felt ‘destroyed’ by the failure of management to take his fear of dogs seriously.
He told the hearing yesterday how he went on sick leave in July 2006 after being subject to ‘constant harassment’ from a family dog in a neighbourhood where he delivered post.
He claimed the dog had pestered him for eight months and once attacked him three times in the space of ten minutes.
The family pet first had a ‘snap’ at his leg after following him down a cul-de-sac before returning to make ‘two more attempts’.
After the third attempt, Mr Dwyer told the dog’s owner he would ‘kill her dog’ and later confided in a fellow post office worker that the ‘dog should be shot’.
However he said that this last comment was made in jest and was not a serious threat.
The woman, who has children, later made a complaint of verbal abuse to An Post against Mr Dwyer in which she claimed that he had called her a ‘fat ****’ during the confrontation.
Mr Dwyer yesterday denied call- ing the mother any such name but did admit threatening to kill the woman’s dog.
He said the row with the mother over her dog was the culmination of a number of incidents involving dogs that had occurred between 1999 and 2006. On one occasion he kicked what was described by his manager as a ‘friendly black collie’ in the head in an allegedly unprovoked attack.
Vincent Whelan, the district service manager, said he was speaking to another staff member, Frank Mathews, in the yard in 2005 when Mr Mathews’ pet dog walked past them and towards Mr Dwyer.
Mr Dwyer was putting post into his car and Mr Whelan said the postman was at least one metre away from the dog and had not been provoked when he lashed out at it.
Séamus Clarke, junior counsel for An Post, read out Mr Mathews’ statement on the incident. In it, he stated the dog was a ‘friendly black collie’ who walked towards the postman’s car ‘wagging his tail’. Mr Mathews stated Mr Dwyer then ‘approached and kicked the dog in the head’ with a steel-toecap boot.
His manager told him the dog had not attacked the postman, and claimed Mr Dwyer then called him a ‘joke of an inspector’.
The postman then left the yard at Edmondstown Sorting Office, Dublin 16, declaring he was ‘going off sick’, the tribunal heard.
In 1999 and 2000 he complained of being attacked twice by the same Jack Russell. He refused to deliver post to the apartment
‘I felt destroyed by lack of action’
building for a period of time out of fear of being attacked by the dog. In a later incident, a retired garda, Oliver Harrington, informed Mr Whelan that his pet dog had been kicked by Mr Dwyer in June 2002.
Mr Harrington said his ‘friendly’ dog had been ‘sitting on the grass’ when the postman approached. He stated that after barking the dog was kicked in the back.
Mr Dwyer told of one incident in 2006 when he found himself trapped in a garden by a ‘monster of a dog’ that was ‘the size of a Rottweiler’ before being ‘saved by two builders with shovels’.
After this experience Mr Dwyer went on sick l eave f or nine months. He was later suspended on full pay before being dismissed by An Post in November 2008.
In May 2007, a chief medical officer declared he was fit to return to work despite his psychiatrist and doctor saying he was suffering from stress.
Mr Dwyer said he always wanted to go back to work as long as An Post addressed his concerns. He said he was unable to return to work as he had been ‘destroyed by what had happened, physically and mentally’. When he was suspended from his job he said he felt he had been ‘labelled a criminal’ and as a person who went about ‘ chasing dogs and kicking the head off them for no reason’.
Mr Dwyer accepted he had been asked to return to work in a position indoors in a bid to address his concern about dog attacks but felt ‘stigmatised’ by working indoors because he claimed ‘people with psychiatric problems’ in An Post were put to work in a backroom in a postal sorting office in the city.
The tribunal also heard how Mr Dwyer became a director and secretary of a new business in May 2007, around the same time as he met the firm’s chief medical officer and while he was out on sick leave. He invested €100,000 in a 50 per cent share in a marine services company which was involved with construction and based in Kilrush, Co. Clare.
He also admitted working as a door- to - door salesman f rom October 2010 to June 2012 despite his fear of dogs.
The tribunal reserved its judgment on the case.