Workers have no ‘collective responsibility’ for business losses, WRC tells catering firm – The Irish Times

A worker left unpaid for over a year after her ex-boss claimed she had “collective responsibility” for poor catering trade at a music festival last year has secured an order for €2,300 in unpaid wages.

“This may come as news to the respondent, but where a business loses money, there is no ‘collective responsibility’ for these losses,” an adjudication officer wrote in a decision published on Tuesday.

Belfast-based Nord Events Ltd has been directed to pay the sum to the worker Martina Tierney after being found in breach of the Payment of Wages Act 1991 by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

Tierney, a secondary schoolteacher, told the WRC that she took up short-term temporary work doing administration for the firm before and during Forest Fest 2025, a three-day music and arts event in Co Laois.

At the time she was hired by company co-owner Aaron Cleary, she was told it was one of a number of festivals for which Nord Events was the catering contractor, she said.

Her duties were in preparation and administration for the catering operation, and she performed “many days” of work between July 18th and 28th, 2025, she said.

Tierney wrote to her employer seeking payment for 119.5 hours on August 8th, 2025, with Cleary having undertaken to pay her no later than 28 days after doing so, she said.

She filed a WRC complaint under the Payment of Wages Act five weeks later on September 15th, 2025 and confirmed at a hearing in September 2026 that she had still yet to be paid – over a year later.

Adjudication officer Pat Brady noted that Tierney wrote to her employer setting out the hours she worked and seeking payment.

In reply, the employer set out a list of issues stated to have arisen at the festival, including reduced turnover and complaints about food.

They blamed these alleged trading difficulties on “a failure of the team put together by [Tierney] to run the operation” Brady wrote.

“He stated that there was what he described as ‘a collective responsibility’ for these poor commercial outcomes. This may come as news to the respondent, but where a business loses money, there is no ‘collective responsibility’ for these losses,” Brady added.

He wrote that businesses had no right to present trading losses as a justification for failing in their legal duty to give staff their properly payable wages.

He upheld Tierney’s complaint and directed the firm to pay her the €2,321.75 in outstanding wages.