A flute teacher who said he was penalised for blowing the whistle on an alleged misuse of public funds at a State-backed music school intends to appeal a tribunal ruling that complaints he raised did not amount to a protected disclosure.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has rejected a claim under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 by Hugh Rance, a long-serving music teacher at the Cork Education and Training Board School of Music.
The tribunal has dismissed Mr Rance’s case with a ruling that his claims alleging “waste and misuse of public funds” by the management of the school in late 2023, due to the level of vacant teaching hours, did not amount to a protected act.
Mr Rance, who appeared before the WRC last year as a lay litigant, said he was taking legal advice and intended to appeal the ruling to the Labour Court.
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At a hearing last August at the WRC’s offices on Eglinton Street in Cork, Mr Rance said he and some of his colleagues had been paid for an “enormous number” of teaching hours with student vacancies over the preceding five years.
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