A south Dublin car dealership has told the Workplace Relations Commission it dismissed a teenage saleswoman because she was not hitting sales targets of 20 cars a month - and insists it had "no knowledge" that she was pregnant at the time.
The worker said she had spent just four full months working there in her first sales job.
She said she was never expected to sell 60 cars in three months as she had just left a retail job "doing batteries, bulbs and wiper blades" at Halfords.
In a complaint under the Employment Equality Act, Abbie Walsh has accused Soraghan Auto Retail Ltd, trading as the Sandyford Motor Centre, of discriminating against her on gender grounds by sacking her on 8 May this year.
Her evidence was that she told the company's sales manager she was pregnant the day after her first scan appointment on 4 April this year and told another colleague - a family friend - around the 6th or 7th of that month, after the sales manager said his goodbyes.
"I wasn’t planning on telling anybody. I hadn’t even told my sisters," she said, adding that she intended to tell senior management formally at the 12-week mark.
The company's position was that the sales manager left the following day, and that if Ms Walsh did tell him she was pregnant, he never passed the information on to senior management.
Neither of the other employees Ms Walsh said she had spoken to about her pregnancy were present at the hearing, with the car dealership’s representative stating that they were no longer with the firm.
Following a two-day absence due to morning sickness, her new line manager called her in and told her: "The lads upstairs have had a chat and they're deciding they’re going to let you go. They’re just not happy with the way things are going," Ms Walsh said.
Nothing was said to her about performance at the meeting, the complainant said.
"I asked him was it because I was sick. He said no. I said was it about anything I've done. He said no," Ms Walsh said.
She said the manager’s words were: "It’s just the way they feel - they’re not a fan of the secrets".
Her response was: "My immune system’s on the floor, the only secret's that I’m pregnant," she said.
"He just shrugged his shoulders and said: 'They want you out today.’ I was waiting for him to backtrack, [tell me] 'I’ll go upstairs and chat with the lads,’ but it did not faze him," Ms Walsh said.
Giving evidence, car dealer Bruce Soraghan said that Ms Walsh received "significant" training but had "quite frankly, struggled".
"She was mad hot to become a senior sales person overnight. I told her, you have to deliver, you have to perform. The contract was signed, the handbook made available, targets would have been given," he said.
"Every month, religiously, I would have gone down into the office with Abbie. I would have gone through the numbers, trying to be supportive," he said.
"It would have been made quite clear, and I don't miss. I know there’s a difficult conversation coming our way. It would have been made clear to Abbie: ‘You’re not making the numbers," Mr Soraghan said.
When it was put to him that Ms Walsh would say in her evidence that the feedback was "always positive" Mr Soraghan replied "Maybe she’s confusing supportive with positive."
He said he did not question Ms Walsh's absences in March and April this year, stating: "We’re scared shitless to ask those personal questions."
The only reason for the decision to dismiss was "purely lack of performance, substandard performance, pure and simple, black and white", he said.
Under cross-examination from counsel for the complainant Seamus Collins BL, who appeared instructed by Daniel O’Connell of Kean’s Solicitors, Mr Soraghan said Ms Walsh knew she would be getting into "a very hard role, cut-throat" and that she "ran out of road".
He said a target for 60 car sales in the first quarter set by the firm applied equally to senior sales staff and people who had just started.
Group head of finance with the firm, Joe O’Grady, said the dealership had set sales targets for each of its salespeople of 60 units in the first quarter and 35 in quarter two – aiming for 150 new and used cars by year-end.
Ms Walsh had sold just 24 by the time she was dismissed on 8 May this year, he said.
"Three units [in April] doesn’t cut it," he said, adding that it was a downward trend.
The complainant's position was that the focus in monthly sales review meetings had been on the number of deposits taken rather than the number of cars delivered to customers, which was what the sales figures cited by the company witnesses recorded.
She said there were difficulties with getting new cars into the country to meet orders and that having only started in January 2023, her New Year sales delivery figures could not compare to those of her colleagues, who had been taking deposits in the months before Christmas.
"Mr Soraghan gave me the advice that I wouldn't hit those targets in any way as a junior salesperson," Ms Walsh said of a review meeting in January, adding that the same was said to her the following month.
Ms Walsh said everyone in the dealership told her the junior sales job was an "apprenticeship" and that the targets quoted by her former bosses were for senior staff.
She said the company's then-sales manager told her she was "flying it" when she sold a car on her fourth day and that her bosses were "very impressed" with her performance in a month-end review meeting at the end of January this year.
Appearing for the dealership, Colin Walsh, industrial relations manager with the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI), said Ms Walsh had been unable to make any "legitimate connection" between the people she told and the information "making its way to anyone else in the organisation".
He said the company only learned of the pregnancy in May when it received her WRC complaint form, and that as the company had not been aware of it, the requirement for the employer to set out "substantive reasons in writing" for the dismissal of a pregnant employee was "not relevant".
Ms Walsh had said she believed word of her pregnancy had spread throughout the company by word of mouth, either via the sales manager or her colleague on the sales floor.
The complainant’s barrister, Seamus Collins, said the alleged "secrets" remark by the new line manager was "a clear allusion to her pregnancy and that the employer was aware".
Mr Collins argued his client’s evidence on the expectations set for her performance at the monthly meetings had been "stronger" than Mr Soraghan’s.
"I just find it unbelievable she would have to sell 60 cars in her first quarter on pain of, if she doesn’t do that she faces dismissal," Mr Collins added.
Adjudicating officer Eileen Campbell closed the hearing yesterday afternoon and told the parties she would issue her decision in writing in a number of weeks.
