Flute teacher who claimed state paid for unused lessons claims he has been punished – The Irish Times

A music teacher claims a state-funded music school is wasting public money by paying him and his colleagues to give lessons that no students could attend. He is now accusing an education and training commission of punishing him for blowing the whistle, refusing to assign him new students and threatening him with disciplinary action.

On Monday, Hugh Rance, a flute teacher from Bantry and a senior employee of the Cork Education and Training Board School of Music, claimed to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) that he and some of his colleagues had been paid for a “huge number” of teaching hours with student vacancies over the past five years.

He stated that the problem had been going on since 2011, when responsibility for recruiting new students was transferred from the music teachers themselves to the head office staff of the Cork ETB School of Music.

He told the Commission he had calculated that his own teaching hours were 63 percent vacant, costing the state about €50,000 a year – calling it a “waste and abuse of public money” and “gross mismanagement”.

Mr Rance said that after discussing the matter with colleagues in October 2023, he discovered that 18 music teachers at the school had had “too many vacant hours for a number of years” – their percentages of unused teaching hours ranging from 35 per cent to 70 per cent in one case.

Mr Rance said he “naively believed” the issue would be addressed by ETB senior management when he raised it and that the CEO, Denis Leamy, would engage with the matter when it was brought to him.

Mr Rance has denied he has a “personal vendetta” with the school’s head teacher, Carol Daly – insisting he just wants to get the school “back on track”.

The court heard that Mr Rance made a series of communications to members of Cork ETB management, including Mr Leamy, referring to unused hours and various other matters in September and October 2023. The ETB disputes that these amounted to protected disclosures and denies any penalty.

He also alleged that from the time he made protected disclosures, other music teachers were assigned new students and “assisted in recruiting new students” while he was assigned none, which he said amounted to “discrimination based on protected disclosures.”

Mr Rance has further alleged that Cork ETB CEO Denis Leamy subjected him to “intimidation” in a series of letters criticising him “for making my protected disclosures and raising issues”.

Earlier, ETB lawyer Shane Crossan told the WRC: “We’re here today on a fairly small issue that has grown into quite a big issue.” He said there had been “teething problems” at the start of the academic year in September 2023 with a new cloud-based timetabling system that required music teachers to regularly check online whether they had been allocated new students.

Mr Rance had missed a lesson with a new pupil in September that year, with a dispute between the parties over whether the timetable had been updated or whether Mr Rance had failed to check it. The court was told that following the missed lesson, Mr Rance had written to the headmaster stating that the new timetable arrangements did not comply with an amendment to the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 because they had not given 24 hours’ notice of any changes to working hours.

This formed the basis for a secondary complaint lodged by Mr Rance under the legislation, which was dismissed by Cork ETB, who argued that Mr Rance was contracted to work a fixed schedule.

Cork ETB is expected to provide evidence later in the proceedings.

Referee Patsy Doyle said she would adjourn the case last night as Mr Rance’s cross-examination on the claim for punishment under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 is expected to take place at a later date.