A former hotel manager has claimed he was unfairly sacked from his €101,500 a year job for paying temporary staff hired at short notice with petty cash in what he claimed were exceptional circumstances.
The Workplace Relations Commission was told that Fergal Ryan, former general manager of the Clayton Hotel in Sligo, was dismissed by the Dalata Hotel Group on January 30 last year for gross misconduct following a disciplinary investigation which found he had breached the company’s policy on the handling of petty cash on three occasions.
Barry Creed, Ryan’s solicitor, said that one alleged breach was Ryan’s decision to hire his partner, Kasia Malinska, a former restaurant manager at the hotel, in December 2018 as a substitute for the hotel chef, whose father had died. Another incident related to the use of two hotel porters as extra security staff in February 2019, and the final issue related to the hiring of a replacement chef over the Easter bank holiday in April that year. Creed asked whether it would have been better for Ryan to have “left 450 guests without food”.
Aaron Shearer BL, counsel for Dalata, said that Ryan’s actions represented “egregious and repeated” breaches of the cash handling policy when he should have known they would warrant dismissal.
Ryan, who had worked in the hotel industry for 30 years and with Dalata since 2014, claimed that the disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him in 2019 after he had declined offers from his employer to leave his role as general manager. Shearer said the company did not accept such an allegation.
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Shane Casserly, Dalata’s corporate development director, who conducted internal disciplinary proceedings, told the commission yesterday that he did not believe the three incidents represented exceptional circumstances. He said that Ryan had made no effort to find a solution that was consistent with the policy and had engaged in “repetitive systematic behaviour” even though he would have been clear about the policy after the first incident.
Casserly said he had found that an allegation that Ryan had directed the engagement of unauthorised security personnel in breach of private security legislation was unproven.
Macarten McGuigan, Dalata’s group internal auditor, gave evidence that company policy only allowed for petty cash to be used for wage advances and one-off exceptional items. McGuigan said invoices should have been generated for the payments by Ryan. He admitted surprise that neither Ryan nor the hotel’s accountant had ever received a copy of the company’s policy on petty cash.
Asked if the death of a chef’s father represented an exceptional incident, McGuigan replied: “It’s an exceptional circumstance for the family. Whether it’s an exceptional circumstance for the running of a hotel is open to discussion.”
The hearing was adjourned.