A judge has criticised the Ministry of Education for failing to communicate properly with a teacher and provide her with information about the safety of her working environment.

Puisne Judge Ian Kawaley said yesterday that the case of Ulama Finn-Hendrickson vs. the Minister of Education need never have reached the Supreme Court if only the Ministry of Education had taken the time to respond to letters from her lawyer.

Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson is the first teacher alleged to have been made sick by mould at CedarBridge Academy to have brought a civil case against the Government. The mother-of-four, who suffered swollen eyes and breathing difficulties due to a mould allergy, alleges that the Ministry of Education unlawfully stopped paying her after she refused to return to CedarBridge without proof that it was a safe place to work.

Her lawyer Paul Harshaw said during a judicial review yesterday that the Ministry of Education had failed to respond to any of his letters or provide documentation on any of the investigations or the clean up operation carried out at the school, which was closed for two months in November 2006 due to mould infestation. Several reports have been written on the state of the school, including at least two which the Ministry of Education has failed to release into the public domain.

"Government has refused consistently to say what they did at CedarBridge or what was the problem at CedarBridge," Mr. Harshaw told the court. "The Government is refusing to release any information on what they know. They are refusing to tell the applicant and this court what they did in order to rectify the situation."

Mr. Justice Kawaley said: "A large part of this case seems to result from letters not being answered."

He added that the Ministry should have responded to Mr. Harshaw's letters and offered to show his client around the school to view the remediation work for herself. "If that had been done, we wouldn't be here," he said. Mr. Justice Kawaley reserved his judgement on the case to a later date. The judge's comments, and those of Mr. Harshaw, add fuel to The Royal Gazette's A Right to Know: Giving People Power campaign.

We are calling for taxpayers to be given access to precisely the kind of information denied Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson and her lawyer by the Ministry of Education. One report on CedarBridge - by Texan laboratory Microbiology Specialists Inc. - was leaked to this newspaper and showed that potentially deadly fungus aspergillus was found on the premises and that Ministry officials knew about the problem in the summer of 2006.

The Ministry has never released that report or another document - produced by Philadelphia-based architectural firm S. Harris & Co. - which revealed that the school was infested with cockroaches. Yesterday's criticism of the Ministry echoes the conclusions in the damning Hopkins review of the public education system. That report, published last May, described the Ministry as "dysfunctional" and "secretive" and said its internal and external communications were poor.