The chief executive of Sport NI, Antoinette McKeown, is to take legal action against her employers for unfair dismissal and sex and religious discrimination, even though she remains in her job.
Axed from the post in November 2016, following her suspension on full pay in March 2015 after a number of gross misconduct charges were lodged against her, Ms McKeown vowed to expose what she described as “months of torture” in the organisation she branded “not fit for purpose.”
The gross misconduct charges against the Silverbridge native were subsequently overturned by an independent appeals panel in June last year and she was reinstated as Chief Executive of the sporting body. The appeal panel report said there had been a “co-ordinated attempt” to get rid of Ms McKeown and described the leadership investigation as having been a “Trojan horse to investigate the appellant without proper formality and protection of due process”.
In an unprecedented action by a still-serving chief executive, Ms McKeown’s case against Sport NI is due to be heard next month at the Fair Employment Tribunal. It’s believed that despite being immediately re-instated after the appeal decision, an agreement on compensation and a public apology is being blocked.
Former assistant secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Peter Bunting, who represented Ms McKeown during her successful appeal, said it was a “shocking abuse of power that a woman, cleared of all wrong-doing and found to be unfairly dismissed, is being forced into a tribunal at a reckless cost to the taxpayer”.
“Accountability for public money must be returned to NI and those responsible for the appalling pursuit of a female CEO should be held to account,” he told the Irish Times last week.
“Yet public officials appear to be insisting on spending more taxpayer money to prolong the ordeal of the very person subjected to an appalling level of victimisation,”