The founder of electric-vehicle battery maker Xerotech has been awarded more than €420,000 after he was “shut out” from the business shortly before it collapsed into liquidation last year.

It’s the biggest award so far this year at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and the third-largest ever made by the tribunal in an unfair dismissals case.

Barry Flannery, the founder and chief executive officer of the company, said he was “forced to resign” from the Co Galway manufacturing company in December 2024.

He told the WRC at a hearing in February that he was, “without warning”, cut off from company systems – and then shut out from the business when his “physical access rights” were disabled.

Flannery said there was a written instruction given on the morning of December 4th that his access to engineering computer systems and a project management platform was to be deactivated.

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He said he had been “stripped of the tools” he needed to do his job while having his communications monitored.

A further instruction later that day directed that the CEO was to have all access “disabled entirely”, the tribunal was told.

Flannery said a further instruction was passed that the contents of his company email account and Microsoft Teams messages were to be made visible “exclusively” to one individual.

This individual then wrote an email making reference to alleged “gross misconduct” and an investigation, the complainant told the tribunal.

Flannery said it seemed there were “unknown allegations” being discussed in the company, which were “never put to him”.

He said there was a “significant governance rupture” the following day, December 5th, when he and every other member of the board except its chairman resigned their directorships.

His solicitors wrote to the company a week later on December 12th, 2024, stating Flannery had been constructively dismissed, which the company’s solicitors denied.

Adjudication officer Breiffni O’Neill wrote he was satisfied the actions towards Flannery by the company “amount to a complete undermining of the employment relationship”.

“No reasonable employee – let alone a senior company officer – could be expected to continue in employment under these circumstances,” he wrote.

He upheld Flannery’s complaint of constructive dismissal in breach of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 and awarded him €420,172.

In setting the award, O’Neill factored in a non-compete clause in Flannery’s contract, which blocked him from taking up a new job in his field until June 12th, 2026.

The adjudicator added that when Flannery was free to go job-hunting, he considered it “unlikely” he would find another job of the same seniority quickly.

This was in view of “the scarcity of CEO-level positions, combined with the circumstances of the dismissal and the disruption to his career trajectory”.

He wrote that for that reason, he was directing the payment of Flannery’s total loss of earnings out to June 2027 – the maximum two years’ pay he had the power to award.

There was “no evidence” set out that Flannery “contributed in any way to his dismissal”, he added – making the financial loss “entirely” the result of his former company’s actions, O’Neill added.

Xerotech Ltd entered voluntary liquidation in February 2025.