WRC awards former ministerial driver €30k over treatment

A tribunal has awarded €30,000 to agriculture minister Charlie McConalogue's former ministerial driver who was subject to"egregious treatment" when he was let go on Christmas Day to make way for a Garda to replace him on security grounds.

His solicitor, Ellen Walsh of Sean Ormonde Solicitors, said the Department of Agriculture’s handling of the matter was a"fiasco" which failed to honour her client’s employment rights, branding it a"sham redundancy". Only ministers sitting at Cabinet got garda drivers under the new security arrangements, the WRC heard. That meant civilian drivers stayed on the Department of Agriculture rota to serve Minister of State Martin Heydon, who does not sit at Cabinet.

In his decision, adjudicator Breiffni O’Neill said that if an employer was going to cite redundancy as the reason for a termination, it had to show that there was a situation of redundancy and also that it had acted fairly. "It is symptomatic of the egregious treatment of the complainant throughout this process that the date of the termination of his employment was Christmas Day, namely 25 December 2022," Mr O’Neill added. He ruled the dismissal unfair.

During the course of the hearing, Mr O’Neill had put it to the sole State witness, Ray Corbett, an assistant principal officer in the Department of Agriculture’s HR section, that it would be normal to offer voluntary redundancies in such circumstances.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

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