The employee is a counter/ shop assistant at a busy twenty-four-hour filling station in the Tirlough area of Galway City: Employment Law Assignment, ATU, Ireland

The employee is a counter/ shop assistant at a busy twenty-four-hour filling station in the Tirlough area of Galway City. In May 2022 the employee was working on the night shift, having commenced work at 9 pm that evening. At approximately 11 pm a person came to the hatch window of the shop and asked for cigarettes.

When the employee placed the cigarettes on the counter the customer reached in and assaulted the employee with a syringe and grabbed the cigarettes from the counter. The assailant fled from the scene and could not be identified by the CCTV cameras on site.

The employee had been provided with a perspex-type screen to prevent customers from assaulting or threatening the workers on night shifts, however, at the time of the accident, the employee did not have the screen closed as he maintained that he could not hear customers when the screen was closed.

The employee had been shown in training how to use the screen and was told that it was there for his safety whilst working nights. The employee admitted that he always worked with the hatch open without the protection of the screen throughout night duty. The employee also confirmed that he was never supervised nor reprimanded for not using the screen.

A psychiatrist report has found characteristics of PTSD to exist. The employee was unable to return to work for six months following the incident and now only works day shifts.

This area of Turlough has seen an increase in crime in recent years and Gardai have attributed much of the crime to an increase in drug abuse in the area.

The parent company which owns a chain of such filling stations in the Galway area has recorded at least seven incidents of threats to staff and five incidents of assault in the previous four years. There is no breakdown as to whether these have occurred during the day or at night.