A government department has reached a settlement with a fireman who was unfairly dismissed.

Mark Versluijs was sacked following an incident in 2018 in which he made a monkey chant in a fire engine as it headed along Lord Street in Douglas.

Earlier this year, he won his claim for unfair dismissal.

But this month, the Fire and Rescue Service, part of the Department of Home Affairs, went to court to appeal the tribunal’s decision.

It argued the tribunal had ’erred in law’ by going ’far beyond its remit’ and carrying out its own fact-finding.

The appeal hearing was due to resume on Tuesday this week, but the hearing has been vacated after the parties reached a settlement.

A court spokesman said: ’Parties have reached a settlement in respect of this matter.’

The employment tribunal concluded that the fire service’s decision to find Mr Versluijs guilty of gross misconduct was ’unfair and unwarranted’.

It found that the principal reason for his dismissal was the whistleblowing ’protected disclosures’ he had made.

Fire chiefs had claimed the loud monkey noises and gestures were openly racist as they were aimed at a pedestrian who was walking along the pavement at the time.

But Mr Versluijs, a full-time firefighter based at Douglas fire station, maintained he had not even seen the pedestrian.

He insisted his monkey noises were directed at the leading firefighter who was known as ’Macca’s Monkey’ by the crew of Blue Watch.

In its findings, the employment tribunal exposed a culture of bullying, laddish banter and sexist and racist comments in the island’s fire and rescue service.

It said it was in no doubt that Mr Versluijs made a whistleblowing complaint in early February 2018 about staffing issues and he had felt he had become a ’marked man’.

The DHA had sought for the case to be remitted back to an employment tribunal to revisit Mr Versluijs’ claim of unfair dismissal.

It did not appeal on the issue of protected disclosures.

A spokesman for the DHA said: ’Over the period of the adjournment of the appeal hearing, the parties settled all matters relating to the dispute on what they both agreed were strictly confidential terms.

’Neither party is in a position to comment further under the terms agreed.