An accountancy firm has said a veteran bookkeeper it was meant to keep on when it bought out her employer of 45 years was “forgotten” in an “administrative error” during the takeover.
The bookkeeper, Siobhan Fanning, along with receptionist Sandra Breen, both allege they suffered ageist discrimination, unfair dismissal and other employment rights breaches when MG Business Advisory Services Ltd merged with another Drogheda accountancy practice, Callan Stringer & Co, last year.
The women, who are aged in their 60s and worked together for four and a half decades, say they were excluded from the business transfer – while a younger colleague was reassured about her future in the merged business and kept on.
Their complaints, under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994, the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the European Communities (Protection of Employees on Transfer of Undertakings) Regulations 2003, are all denied by the company.
Ms Breen joined the firm that would become Callan Stringer & Co as a secretary in September 1979, and Ms Fanning started work there in October 1980, as a bookkeeper, the tribunal was told.
Ms Fanning said she was left “worried” about the future of her job after the two principals of the firm announced their retirement and a plan to merge the office with MG at a meeting on 19 February 2025.
“We weren’t told nothing would change,” Ms Fanning said in evidence to the WRC on Monday. She said her bosses told the meeting that MG was “very modern, they’re high-tech, they use different systems”.
“It was said to me they don’t use Excel. It was very dismissive, they don’t do bank reconciliations, they don’t do any of that. I did say in my head: ‘Well, that’s not my work.’ I tried to listen and take it on,” she said.
The women’s case is that a remark was made at the meeting that MG was “a younger company and probably a bit more IT-oriented”, it was submitted by their barrister, Paul D Maier BL, who was instructed by DJM Legal.
“I suppose at my age… in this whole process I do feel I have become personal non grata. I felt invisible, and I did feel very marginalised and excluded,” Ms Fanning said.
She accepted she asked no questions at the 19 February meeting, but said it had been “sprung on us” and lasted just 15 minutes.
“I felt that after 45 years, I suppose I could say I thought I deserved to have a proper discussion,” she said.
The women’s case is that one of the owners of the practice met alone with a younger colleague of theirs who was “given reassurances that there’s a place for her in the new company” and that she would “thrive” there.
Mr Maier said there were no private meetings with his clients and they were “not given similar assurances” ahead of the proposed transfer.
The respondent’s representative, Jack Lundy of Peninsula Business Services, said in a submission on Ms Fanning’s complaints that the staff were told at the meeting that “things would always continue as they had under the same terms of employment”.
Mark Gibbons, the owner of MG Business Advisory Services, gave similar assurances at a meeting with the CS staff on 5 March 2025, Mr Lundy submitted further.
However, both Ms Fanning and Ms Breen said in evidence that they were so affected by stress at the time that they were signed off work by their doctors in mid-March 2025.
Both remained on certified medical leave when the merger took place on 30 April 2025, the tribunal heard.
Mr Lundy said a “negative atmosphere” at the workplace after the 19 February meeting “emanated” from Ms Fanning and Ms Breen as the women were “unhappy [they] wouldn’t be getting a redundancy”.
Ms Fanning said on this point: “I think it was said I was disappointed about not getting redundancy. I was disappointed that after 45 years I hadn’t been treated a little bit more respectfully. It had nothing to do with redundancy.”
Mr Gibbons said he posted letters confirming the transfer of the women’s employment to their home addresses. Ms Fanning’s evidence was that she received no such letter.
Ms Breen and Ms Fanning told the tribunal they checked their online Revenue records in June 2025 and saw that while their employment with Callan Stringer was marked as ceased, they had not been registered as employees of MG Business Advisory Services.
“I don’t understand how three well-educated individuals could not just comply with TUPE. It’s very straightforward. Transfer the employees. There was only three to be transferred, and one was, Siobhán and I were not,” Ms Breen said.
“It made me feel my 46 years working with these gentlemen… what was it all for?” Ms Breen added.
“We didn’t hear anything until a solicitor’s letter on 6 August, [which] only then bought to our attention that the complainant hadn’t been registered with Revenue,” Mr Lundy said in relation to Ms Fanning’s complaints.
“Mr Gibbons will give evidence that this was an administrative error on his part. The company was going through a unique transfer of a kind it had never dealt with before… and in the transfer, it was forgotten to register the complainant,” Mr Lundy said in a submission on Ms Fanning’s complaint.
Mr Maier said: “We submit this is basically giving someone their P45 through a digital format”.
Adjudicator Eileen Campbell adjourned the hearing after hearing the evidence-in-chief of Ms Breen.
