Salesman's Unfair Dismissal Compensation Halved After Pub Spending

A salesman accused of using a company credit card to buy cigarettes and lotto tickets and his work email to register with dating websites has had an €18,000 award for unfair dismissal halved at the Labour Court. Kashan Carpets, trading as Lynfrae Trading, had appealed the decision of an adjudication officer at the Workplace Relations Commission that Fergal McGrath had been unfairly dismissed due a lack of fair procedure. The company conceded that the process in Mr McGrath’s dismissal was flawed, but argued his behaviour had been such that the sacking could not be regarded as unfair. Mr McGrath had been taken on by the company in November 2021 and given sales targets of €35,000 a month, the court was told in evidence. He failed to meet this target, averaging about €20,000. The events that led to his dismissal, however, were said to have started when a bookkeeper noticed a number of inappropriate transactions on a company credit card issued to Mr McGrath to cover travel and other work-related expenses. The court was told that between August 2022 and May 2023, the card was used more than 30 times in his local pub, with some of these purchases taking place over weekends or the Christmas period, when he was not working. The company’s managing director, Ralph Hance, told the court there were also cash withdrawals on the card in addition to payments for cigarettes and lotto tickets. In addition, there had been an issue in relation to the company van driven by the complainant. It had, some months earlier, suffered damage which required repairs costing more than €7,000. He said Mr McGrath could not explain how the damage occurred and had said he did not initially notice it. In his evidence, Mr McGrath denied having ever purchased alcohol with a company card and said some of the transactions had been in relation to lunches. He said he had never been given proper guidance in relation to the use of the card and that issues in relation to any improper use had not been raised with him. He said that if he had purchased cigarettes or lotto tickets, these transactions had been honest mistakes – the WRC heard both his personal and work cards were issued by AIB – and he would have refunded the money if given the opportunity. He said the dating sites were free, with the email address only used for verification, and that he had only noticed the damage to the van while driving it, suggesting that somebody may have reversed into it while he was making a purchase during an earlier stop at a service station. In relation to the sales targets, he said he was required to do significant amounts of work away from his sales role, including deliveries, and the country was going through a cost-of-living crisis. In its decision, the court acknowledged the company had cited cases in which flawed procedures had not been fatal to an employer’s position, but that the sacking in this instance was “entirely devoid of process”. It had been carried out at a meeting on June 16th, 2023, at which no notes were taken, only two people were present, and the decision to dismiss was taken by the same person who made the charges. The complainant had been given no prior notice of the process and was offered no right of appeal. The court put his losses at €40,000, as he was unemployed for a year, but found “little or no” evidence he had sought to mitigate the losses during that time by finding another job. It described his evidence in relation to the van as “lacking credibility”. It concluded his sacking had been unfair due to the process involved but reduced the €40,000 losses by 30 per cent due to the lack of effort to mitigate and 48 per cent due to Mr McGrath’s contribution to the dismissal, awarding him €8,800 in compensation.