A sacked carpet salesman whose former boss accused him of buying cigarettes and lotto tickets on a company credit card and incurring expenses at his local pub "morning and night" has won €18,000 for unfair dismissal.
The Workplace Relations Commission found that Lynfrae Trading Company Ltd, trading as Kashan Carpets, undertook a "fundamentally flawed" disciplinary process were they failed to give the worker advance notice of the allegations against the employee, failed to take notes and failed to provide for an appeal.
The disciplinary officer was also the same person who made the charges, the WRC noted. The employment tribunal has ordered the company to pay the employee, Fergal McGrath, almost all his financial losses up to the point it heard his case last year.
The WRC heard that Mr McGrath was already under scrutiny after being unable to account for thousands of euro worth of damage to a company van he had been driving when his boss carried out an "audit" of credit card spending and then moved to dismiss him last year.
Mr McGrath maintained the pub food had been in lieu of missed lunches on days he was on the road and that the only time he would have bought cigarettes and a lotto ticket on the company card was a "mistake" for which he would have reimbursed his employer if it had been raised.
The company's managing director, Raph Hance, told the WRC last October that a company van was "crashed" after it was given to Mr McGrath, who was "unable to tell me when it happened".
He said he was told by his mechanic when the van was taken off the road in March 2023: "No-one could drive a van with this much damage without knowing there was a problem." He said the damage cost "several thousand euros" but that further problems with the vehicle meant he was still unable to put it back on the road.
"It looks like it'll have to be written off," Mr Hance said. He said what Mr McGrath had told him about the damage "just didn’t ring true".
"I’d have no problem if he’d said he had an accident and how it happened. Nobody who looks at the van believe somebody wouldn’t know how it happened or where it happened. He could give no details," Mr Hance said.
Mr McGrath said he simply found that the van was losing power while he was on a delivery run in Co Wexford and immediately pulled in and reported the problem to Mr Hance – but that he only found the damage afterwards.
"In my mind, somebody at some stage had obviously reversed into the front of the van. When you walk out of a shop and get into a van you are not looking at the front," he said.
Mr Hance also said the salesman was using a company credit card "in his local pub, mornings and evenings" and had also bought lottery tickets and cigarettes.
"I thought: 'I can’t trust somebody using company money for personal expenses,’" Mr Hance said.
Mr McGrath said that he had only bought a packet of cigarettes and a lotto ticket "on one occasion" with the company credit card and that he told his ex-employer that it was "obviously a mistake" on the day he was sacked.
"The company credit card is an AIB card, my personal card is an AIB card. I obviously went into a shop and tapped the card. If that was an issue you should have said it to me and I’d have paid back the €24 or whatever it was," Mr McGrath said.
He said an item of spending at a bar called Carpenters in Carlow Town, near his home, was "obviously a day when I’d been on the road all day without lunch"
"When I got back to Carlow I got food when I finished," he said.
"Did you get a drink as well?" adjudicating officer Michael MacNamee asked.
"No, I would never charge drink to a company card. I was driving so I wouldn’t be drinking anyway," Mr McGrath said.
"There was several meals, breakfasts and dinners in his local pub. Some of these were on days when the van was off the road," Mr Hance said. He put the total cost of this spending at between €100 and €150.
Mr McGrath said he had been using a rental van provided by the firm when the original van was off the road and that other spending had been travel-related as well.
A third factor cited by Mr Hance was Mr McGrath’s performance at work. He said the salesman was costing more than the revenue he was creating.
Mr McGrath’s position was that he was called away to do delivery work so much he didn’t have time to devote to develop the company’s wholesale business.
The WRC heard Mr Hance called Mr McGrath to a meeting on 16 June 2023 in Dublin, where he dismissed the complainant and took the credit card and a fuel card from him.
In his decision, adjudicator Michael MacNamee wrote: "It is evident that the disciplinary process, if indeed it can be so described at all, was so fundamentally flawed as to render the dismissal unfair and I so find."
Among the issues the adjudicator noted were the employer’s failure to use a written disciplinary process; failure to give the worker advance notice of the allegations against him, the failure to take notes at the meeting and the failure to provide for an appeal.
The disciplinary officer, Mr Hance, was also the same person who made the charges, Mr MacNamee noted.
The adjudicator was satisfied the worker had made adequate efforts to mitigate his losses by seeking new work since dismissal. He directed the company to pay Mr McGrath €18,000 for almost six months’ losses, calling it "just and equitable compensation for unfair dismissal".
