Author Julie’s dogged fight to clear her name

What happens to a public servant who is asked to do something they believe is both morally and ethically wrong?
Julie Grace faced that conundrum. On three occasions, the former Galway City Council worker refused to carry out orders of her superiors. “It cost me my career,” she says.
“The cost of doing the right thing, doing what I felt was morally and ethically correct, was my career. But if you asked me would I do it again: I would. Because all I have coming into this World and going out of it is my good name.”
Julie, a tenant liaison officer, believed that good name was tarnished by Galway City Council during the scandal that has become known as the ‘Bríd Cummins affair’.
In her new book, ‘Abuse of Power: Because Councils Can’, Julie recounts the struggle of Bríd Cummins against the City Council. A woman who suffered mental health problems, Bríd Cummins exhausted all avenues battling against what she felt was an unwarranted and unfair eviction by the local authority.
She was found dead in her flat by Council officials when they went to collect her keys.
The book also recounts Julie Grace’s own struggle with City Hall; and chronicles her High Court case against the City Council, in which her good name was restored.
It was September, 2003, when Julie was first asked to do something that attacked her morals and ethics and sense of right.
Recounting the story she told to the High Court, Julie tells the Galway City Tribune she was asked to accompany a neighbour of Bríd Cummins to the offices of Blake and Kenny, the local authority’s solicitors, in order that that person would pursue the option of taking an injunction out against Bríd Cummins, using the Council’s own legal team.
“I knew it was neither morally nor ethically right. I knew that nobody in the Council had it in their gift to give that service, to a private citizen, for any reason, paid for by the Council. It was wrong.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.