A tribunal has made a reduced award of €10,000 for unfair dismissal to a builder whose work van racked up over 1,000 miles in "unexplained" driving after his boss discovered a vehicle tracker on the dashboard was being disconnected - and had a second one covertly installed.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has upheld a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against specialist construction firm Protum Services by Barry Naughton, but cut the award to take account of his "very significant contribution" to his own sacking by "interfering" with the first tracker.
The company's position was that trackers were installed at the start of 2022 for insurance reasons and that all its staff were informed at the time. Its solicitor submitted that there were "unusual occurrences" with Mr Naughton's van starting in 2022.
Mr Naughton's employer found the tracking device "disconnected and sitting loose" on one occasion, the tribunal was told.
When the firm was looking into one customer complaint, the tracker supplier reported back that the complainant’s device was not powered up properly and "regularly offline", the tribunal was told.
After that, the employer "decided to covertly hardwire a device in the complainant's van in addition to the dashboard tracker", the firm’s solicitor submitted.
Between the installation of the device on an unspecified date and the beginning of November 2023, "considerable unrecorded and unexplained mileage" had built up, with "in excess of 1,000 miles" in the difference between the two tracking devices.
Mr Naughton was called to a disciplinary meeting on 1 December 2023 accused of using the company van for personal travel and of interfering with the dashboard tracking device the firm had fitted.
He was sacked on a finding of gross misconduct following a second meeting a few days later, the dismissal confirmed in writing on 8 December, the WRC was told.
In the course of the meetings, Mr Naughton denied unplugging the tracker and said the personal use of company vans was "commonplace" in the firm, the tribunal was told. However, the company considered that there was evidence that he had been "regularly unplugging" the tracker.
The company's position was that the mileage issue by itself warranted a final written warning, but that unplugging the tracker was a "major breach of trust" and that the only option was immediate dismissal.
Mr Naughton claimed he was sacked to "make room for a more favoured colleague of the owner", claiming that the company had cash flow problems and there was a need to make "economies".
He called the issue over the company van "a complete fabrication to cover this".
He said it was "custom and practice" in the firm to make personal use of company vans. His employer regularly used his own van to go on fishing trips with other employees, Mr Naughton told the tribunal.
Mr Naughton's evidence was that he had been permitted to use his work van to transport motorbikes to races, but that most of his personal use was to pick up his daughter from sports events and that this was "well known to all staff".
Meanwhile, he said, he had often used his own personal vehicle on company jobs to "facilitate" his employer when a van was unavailable.
He said there were no "proper HR procedures" and no appeal offered to an independent person.
Adjudicator Michael McEntee wrote in his decision that there was "no doubt that the [dashboard] tracking device had been regularly disconnected" given the anomaly between that tracker and the secret one placed in the van.
He considered that the employer had launched "quite a major investigation, including installing the hidden tracker", and that the failure to tell the complainant he was under investigation was "troubling".
"[Mr Naughton] did not appear to have had any advance warning of what the respondent was doing vis-à-vis tracker devices; installing a covert hard-wired device being a troubling example," Mr McEntee added.
Other procedural issues identified by the adjudicator were that the same person carried out the investigation and the disciplinary hearing and that there was no appeal offered.
He found that there had been a lack of natural justice in the moves to dismiss Mr Naughton and ruled the dismissal unfair - but said the worker had made a very considerable contribution by interfering with the device.
In calculating an award, Mr McEntee considered a headline figure of 26 weeks’ pay totalling €19,721 to be appropriate in view of Mr Naughton’s short period out of work and continuing losses of €200 a week in self-employment.
He cut that sum by 50% for the complainant’s contribution to the dismissal, yielding €9,860, and rounded it up to a final award of €10,000.
Further complaints by Mr Naughton under the Payment of Wages Act, and the Organisation of Working Time Act were withdrawn.
