Avoca has been accused of going over the top by firing its head chef of 17 years after a company investigator decided he had "falsified" refrigeration records for two batches of curry.
The Workplace Relations Commission has heard the company told Health Service food safety inspectors, who flagged the record in a June 2024 audit, that it believed there was no "no food safety risk" and did not recall the meals.
It then moved to sack its head chef, Giorgio Romano, for "flagrant, deliberate disregard of health and safety and food hygiene precautions".
Lawyers for Mr Romano have argued the company acted disproportionately by sacking their client, who, they said was under "extraordinary pressure" and made a "genuine mistake".
Mr Romano said in his evidence that he was originally recruited in Italy by Avoca's former co-owner, Simon Pratt, and moved to Ireland in 2007 to help set up its Fern House restaurant in Kilmacanogue.
He was head chef for the business when it was acquired by international catering giant Aramark in 2015, and, prior to his dismissal, was at work in Avoca’s central bakery kitchen, where dishes were cooked for sale in Avoca’s restaurants and at retail stores, the tribunal was told.
Health inspectors who came to audit the central kitchen notified Avoca that year that records kept in the kitchen about the temperature and chill time for one batch of a vegetarian chilli and a Thai yellow curry made in the kitchen on 4 June that year were "not correct", company investigator Sarah Kennedy told the hearing.
She said she put Mr Romano on notice that he was under investigation for "falsification of records, deliberate misinterpretation [and] deliberate disregard for health and safety".
"He confirmed he signed the blast chiller records and knew the times were incorrect," Ms Kennedy said. "He said he didn’t take the temperature of the food when it was finished," she added.
Following a disciplinary investigation meeting on 21 June, 2024 with Ms Kennedy, Mr Romano was referred to a disciplinary hearing on 7 August that year with the head of the central bakery kitchen, Mike Conway. He was summarily sacked on 16 August that year, the tribunal was told.
Cross-examining Ms Kennedy, Tiernan Lowey BL, for the complainant, put it to her that her client had not made admissions supporting her findings. Mr Romano would say in his evidence he had "explained to you and the company that it was never his intention to mislead, but that he was under pressure at the time".
"Me, as the investigating manager, I took it that he knew the times weren’t correct," Ms Kennedy said.
Mr Lowey asked the disciplinary officer, Mr Conway, what food safety risk arose. Initially, Mr Conway said there was "the possibility of bacteria or pathogens forming in the product".
Mr Lowey said if there had been a food safety risk, Avoca ought to have issued a recall to take the products off the market.
"Did that happen here? He asked.
"No," Mr Conway said. He then accepted there was "no risk" from the chilling of the food.
He put it to Mr Conway that firing Mr Romano was "completely inconsistent" with what the company had told the HSE about the matter.
Mr Conway said it was the non-adherence to procedure which was at issue.
Mr Lowey said his client had tried to mount a defence in the disciplinary hearing when he told Mr Conway he was "under a lot of pressure" on the day of the event because the kitchen was short-handed and it was his client’s first time operating new industrial-sized "kettles" by himself.
Mr Lowey put it to the witness that he had been conducting a "sentencing hearing" relying on findings of fact by Ms Kennedy and was only deciding what sanction to apply.
"Absolutely not, that was not the case," Mr Conway said. He denied Mr Romano was under pressure.
"That day, I have all the pressure around, have a lot of things to do, and I’m just starting to work with the new equipment," Mr Romano said, as he gave evidence with the assistance of an Italian-language interpreter.
He said a kitchen assistant was meant to have the job of taking the curries out of the chiller and transferring it to a dispatch fridge. The hearing heard that he told his bosses this kitchen assistant "would always disappear" to the works canteen and was "never to be found".
"I see the two products I make not taken out by [the kitchen assistant] and I take out myself. My first instinct, to take out the product before frozen and take out the container to put in the bucket.
"The product, I know, is below five degrees, but it’s not frozen," he said.
"I say 'approx this temperature’ because it’s not frozen, but after [above] zero still," Mr Romano added.
Alexandra Tiilikainen of IBEC, for the company, put it to the complainant that putting a temperature he "never measured" on the document was "the same as falsifying the document".
"Yes," Mr Romano said.
However, he denied putting the company at risk because he was "sure the product was under five [degrees celsius]".
Ms Tiilikainen said Avoca "had no other option but to dismiss the complainant" after he admitted "falsifying the documents".
Mr Lowey said: "It is one mistake at a time when he was under extraordinary levels of unusual pressure. It did not, as the company has said already, give rise to a health and safety risk," he added – calling it a "disproportionate" sanction in view of his client’s long clean record in the job.
Counsel said there was no need for his client to advance an "ulterior motive" for the sacking, but there was "one other Banquo’s ghost in this sorry saga" – the fact that Avoca had hired a second, younger head chef aged in his forties six months earlier.
Adjudicator Donal Moore closed the hearing on Thursday and said he expected to be in a position to write out to the parties with his decision in around 12 weeks.
