A UK dental implants company has been ordered to pay €55,000 to a former Irish sales manager who was unfairly dismissed in an alleged bogus redundancy.
Her barrister told the Workplace Relations Commission her client was approached by a recruiter after being made redundant looking to fill a role which had "allegedly been removed" by the company.
Orla Sheehy's complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against Megagen Implants UK Ltd was upheld in a decision published this morning.
Ms Sheehy’s representative, Cathy McGrady BL, told the employment tribunal that her client had been "very successful" as territory manager for Ireland and Scotland since starting in 2017, but was "frozen out" of the company after supporting a colleague in a bullying complaint in 2019.
Ms Sheehy said in her evidence that she was laid off with arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic to Ireland in March 2020, and that her layoff continued past May that year, when dental surgeries were reopened.
Ms Sheehy said customers were contacting her about orders at this time, but that when she sought a return to work it did not happen, even though her colleagues in other areas were already back.
In August, her bosses told her the territory manager role for the island of Ireland was being "removed from the organisation", the tribunal heard.
The firm told her redundancy was "impossible to avoid" because of a loss of revenue and the absence of "other work opportunities".
Ms McGrady said the firm’s managing director had "simply read from a prepared script" during a "purported" redundancy consultation call and "ignored" her suggestions on alternative work and reduced hours.
It was the complainant’s case that the consultation minutes submitted by the company to the tribunal were "selective and completely inaccurate".
"The actual work continued North and South," Ms McGrady submitted, adding that her client had been approached by a recruiter "seeking candidates for her position which had allegedly been removed from the organisation".
Counsel added that the "purported revenue figures" cited to justify Ms Sheehy’s redundancy were "completely unrealistic" since her client had been "prevented from returning to work when the dental industry had resumed".
She said there was "no logic" to the redundancy when the government’s Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme was available at the time.
Ms McGrady said the consultation was "completely artificial and rushed" and added that the offer of an appeal to a company manager below the managing director was "symptomatic of a completely flawed process".
Barry Crushell, who appeared for the employer, said the firm had experienced a "catastrophic decline" in Ireland and the UK that left almost all staff "laid off or furloughed".
He said one of the "major business survival decisions" it was forced to make was to pull out of the Irish market.
Mr Crushell said Ms Sheehy was not comparable to a "territory manager" in the UK and held a "unique" position as the sole Irish employee.
He added that a suggestion by the complainant side that redundancies should have been based on headcount across Ireland and the UK were not "realistic or practical".
He added that the redundancy process had been "fair and open" and that pulling out of Ireland made her redundancy an "unfortunate necessity".
The company's operations director accepted in her evidence that the company now had a new salesperson based in Belfast.
"Guarantees were impossible," she said, in view of the "uncertain future prospects" of the dental business at the time.
She said the bullying allegations in late 2019 had no bearing on the decision to make Ms Sheehy redundant.
In his decision, the adjudicating officer Michael McEntee wrote that his impression based on the evidence of the redundancy process was that a "pre-ordained business decision had been taken".
"The conclusion had to be that there was no impression, or more importantly, strong evidence, presented of any employment alternatives from the complainant being considered," he wrote.
He added that the suggestion that a subordinate of the managing director could conduct an appeal of his redundancy decision was a further flaw in the procedure.
However, Mr McEntee found the claims around the 2019 bullying complaint by Ms Sheehy’s colleague were "impossible to form an opinion on" without the managing director appearing to give evidence.
He found that on balance the respondent had not met the standard of proof for the defence of redundancy and upheld the Unfair Dismissal claim.
Mr McEntee made an order for two years’ loss of earnings, €55,000 to be paid to Ms Sheehy.
He said this was a "just and equitable" order which would allow for a deduction reflecting a €4,200 statutory redundancy payment already made to the complainant.
