NUIG regret over ‘terrible damage’ and PR disaster

Referring to the story broken by the Galway City Tribune last month, Dr Jim Browne admitted the matter was a “PR disaster”.

In an interview with this newspaper, Dr Browne said: “That was a lacuna, no question about it. These things will happen in large organisations. I regret it, but as soon as we knew about it, we corrected it.

“That’s something that should never have happened here and we have taken steps to rectify that. We were certainly not aware that it was going on. It [the questionnaire] has been withdrawn and is being revised completely.

“This is a big organisation, lots of things happen. Lots of things happened historically, we had outsourced the assessment of staff from a medical point of view prior to appointment and we obviously hadn’t taken sufficient care with the form that assessment took and we’re correcting it,” he said.

Questions were previously branded ‘invasive’, ‘misogynistic’ and ‘excessively personal’.

Among the questions asked were: “Do you suffer with any problems with your menstrual periods? Do you suffer any breast problems? Have you ever been treated for gynaecological problems?”  Dr Browne added that with 3,000 employees in the university, things would go wrong occasionally.

He also claimed that some politicians deliberately misled the public on the story in an effort to steal media limelight.

“It was particularly embarrassing. It was also slightly overdone in how it was presented. There was stuff said about us by certain public representatives which was blatantly untrue. One particular representative said people were being asked these questions at interview which was never true,” he said.

The original story in this newspaper clearly stated that the questionnaire was an occupational health ‘pre-employment health assessment’ and not part of an interview.

For more on this story, see this week's Galway City Tribune