A publican who sacked a barman after falling out with the worker’s father and barring him has been ordered to pay over €9,000 for unfair dismissal and multiple further employment rights breaches.
The worker, Jamie McGee-Gilmore, secured the awards against Aaron Coughlin, trading as Finn McCool’s Bar in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, after the businessman told a Workplace Relations Commission adjudicator that he “would not pay anything” – and then left the hearing.
That was despite the official presiding over the WRC hearing at Letterkenny Courthouse last month telling him it was in his best interests to stay.
The adjudicator found there had been an “egregious default of employer responsibility” in the case and remarked that employers have “no excuse” for such failures when information on their duties is “freely available”.
Mr McGee-Gilmore told the WRC he had been working at the bar, where his mother had been the manager, for around two years until a “disagreement” arose between his former employer and his father early in June 2024.
“They had been good friends until then,” the complainant told the tribunal.
The barman’s evidence was that he and the rest of the staff of the bar were told by text that the bar was closing for repairs and redecoration to comply with a health inspection.
When it reopened – “quietly” at first in July 2024, before a “more public opening” in August that year, promoted on social media – there was a new set of bar staff and neither Mr McGee-Gilmore nor his mother were brought back, he told the tribunal. The bar was subsequently shut down again, the WRC was told.
Mr Coughlin told the hearing the “real reason” for the disagreement was because he had barred Mr McGee-Gilmore’s father from the premises and the complainant and his mother were “angry about it”.
“They ran the bar very poorly. They failed to manage the place and breached the licence hours, leading to the gardaí having to be called,” he said of Mr McGee-Gilmore and his mother.
He said they had failed to tell him that a health inspector had visited the bar and directed remediation works. He said he had planned to buy the premises from its owners and carry out remedial works.
Mr Coughlin stated that he then heard that the complainant was “spreading damaging stories about him around the town and was threatening to take him to the WRC”.
After that, he said, he decided he would not employ Mr McGee-Gillmore.
Adjudication officer Emile Daly, who heard the case at a sitting of the WRC at Letterkenny Courthouse on 11 February this year, noted that Mr Coughlin told her: “Whatever is ordered by the WRC. [I] will not pay it.”
“The respondent then left the hearing,” Ms Daly noted. She had urged him to stay and give evidence in another related case before her, but Mr Coughlin was “adamant that he wished to leave” and did so, she noted.
In her decision, Ms Daly wrote: “It is not legally permissible for an employer to dismiss an employee because he hears rumours that the complainant is bad-mouthing him behind his back without any fair procedures.”
Ruling Mr Coughlin in breach of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, she ordered him to pay €2,880 to Mr McGee-Gilmore.
She concluded that there had been “multiple” breaches of employment law in the case. “The difficulty with the respondent’s position is that he accepted the role of employer, but not the responsibilities,” she wrote.
“Employers now have no excuse given the freely available information that is available on the obligations that employers owe to employees. The evidence in this case shows egregious default of employer responsibility,” she wrote.
Noting that Mr McGee-Gilmore’s wages had been only €10 an hour at a time that the minimum wage was €12.70, Ms Daly ruled Mr Coughlin in breach of the National Minimum Wage Act, and awarded the worker €913.95 to make up the shortfall over 338.5 hours of work. The complaint had been conceded by the employer.
The adjudicator also directed the payment of €203.31 as a premium for the five Sundays worked by the complainant and €360 for minimum notice under the Payment of Wages Act. There was a further order under this act for €60 in outstanding wages.
Ms Daly also directed the payment of €200 for each of three distinct breaches of the Organisation of Working Time Act in connection with the failure to provide for the statutory shift breaks and arrange a roster giving sufficient daily and weekly rest periods between shifts.
Further awards were given for further breaches of the Organisation of Working Time Act: €720 for the loss of two weeks’ of annual leave and €960 for 16 unpaid public holidays. The total awarded to Mr McGee-Gilmore in the case was €9,115.26.
