It then moved to sack its head chef, Giorgio Romano, for \u201cflagrant, deliberate disregard of health and safety and food hygiene precautions\u201d. <\/p>\n
Lawyers for Mr Romano have argued the company acted disproportionately by sacking their client, who, they said was under \u201cextraordinary pressure\u201d and made a \u201cgenuine mistake\u201d. <\/p>\n
Mr Romano said in his evidence that he was originally recruited in Italy by Avoca\u2019s former co-owner, Simon Pratt, and moved to Ireland in 2007 to help set up its Fern House restaurant in Kilmacanogue. <\/p>\n
He was head chef for the business when it was acquired by international catering giant Aramark in 2015, and, prior to his dismissal, was at work in Avoca\u2019s central bakery kitchen, where dishes were cooked for sale in Avoca\u2019s restaurants and at retail stores, the tribunal was told. <\/p>\n
Health inspectors who came to audit the central kitchen notified Avoca that year that records kept in the kitchen about the temperature and chill time for one batch of a vegetarian chilli and a Thai yellow curry made in the kitchen on 4th June that year were \u201cnot correct\u201d, company investigator Sarah Kennedy told the hearing. <\/p>\n
She said she put Mr Romano on notice that he was under investigation for \u201cfalsification of records, deliberate misinterpretation [and] deliberate disregard for health and safety\u201d. <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1754647931518-c07d65db-55b5-463e-ae51-976300c5837e.jpeg\"\/)
Is it time Ireland abolished mandatory retirement?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe confirmed he signed the blast chiller records and knew the times were incorrect,\u201d Ms Kennedy said. \u201cHe said he didn\u2019t take the temperature of the food when it was finished,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
Following a disciplinary investigation meeting on 21 June, 2024 with Ms Kennedy, Mr Romano was referred to a disciplinary hearing on 7th August that year with the head of the central bakery kitchen, Mike Conway. He was summarily sacked on 16th August that year, the tribunal was told. <\/p>\n
Cross-examining Ms Kennedy, barrister Tiernan Lowey, for the complainant, put it to her that her client had not made admissions supporting her findings. Mr Romano would say in his evidence he had \u201cexplained to you and the company that it was never his intention to mislead, but that he was under pressure at the time\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cMe, as the investigating manager, I took it that he knew the times weren\u2019t correct,\u201d Ms Kennedy said. <\/p>\n
Mr Lowey asked the disciplinary officer, Mr Conway, what food safety risk arose. Initially, Mr Conway said there was \u201cthe possibility of bacteria or pathogens forming in the product\u201d. <\/p>\n
Mr Lowey said if there had been a food safety risk, Avoca ought to have issued a recall to take the products off the market. <\/p>\n
\u201cDid that happen here? He asked. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Mr Conway said. He then accepted there was \u201cno risk\u201d from the chilling of the food. <\/p>\n
He put it to Mr Conway that firing Mr Romano was \u201ccompletely inconsistent\u201d with what the company had told the HSE about the matter. <\/p>\n
Mr Conway said it was the non-adherence to procedure which was at issue. <\/p>\n
Mr Lowey said his client had tried to mount a defence in the disciplinary hearing when he told Mr Conway he was \u201cunder a lot of pressure\u201d on the day of the event because the kitchen was short-handed and it was his client\u2019s first time operating new industrial-sized \u201ckettles\u201d by himself. <\/p>\n
Mr Lowey put it to the witness that he had been conducting a \u201csentencing hearing\u201d relying on findings of fact by Ms Kennedy and was only deciding what sanction to apply. <\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely not, that was not the case,\u201d Mr Conway said. He denied Mr Romano was under pressure. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat day, I have all the pressure around, have a lot of things to do, and I\u2019m just starting to work with the new equipment,\u201d Mr Romano said, as he gave evidence with the assistance of an Italian-language interpreter. <\/p>\n
He said a kitchen assistant was meant to have the job of taking the curries out of the chiller and transferring it to a dispatch fridge. The hearing heard that he told his bosses this kitchen assistant \u201cwould always disappear\u201d to the works canteen and was \u201cnever to be found\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cI see the two products I make not taken out by [the kitchen assistant] and I take out myself. My first instinct, to take out the product before frozen and take out the container to put in the bucket. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe product, I know, is below five degrees, but it\u2019s not frozen,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI say \u2018approx this temperature\u2019 because it\u2019s not frozen, but after [above] zero still,\u201d Mr Romano added. <\/p>\n
Alexandra Tiilikainen of IBEC, for the company, put it to the complainant that putting a temperature he \u201cnever measured\u201d on the document was \u201cthe same as falsifying the document\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d Mr Romano said. <\/p>\n
However, he denied putting the company at risk because he was \u201csure the product was under five [degrees Celsius]\u201d. <\/p>\n
Ms Tiilikainen said Avoca \u201chad no other option but to dismiss the complainant\u201d after he admitted \u201cfalsifying the documents\u201d. <\/p>\n
Mr Lowey said: \u201cIt is one mistake at a time when he was under extraordinary levels of unusual pressure. It did not, as the company has said already, give rise to a health and safety risk,\u201d he added \u2013 calling it a \u201cdisproportionate\u201d sanction in view of his client\u2019s long clean record in the job. <\/p>\n
Counsel said there was no need for his client to advance an \u201culterior motive\u201d for the sacking, but there was \u201cone other Banquo\u2019s ghost in this sorry saga\u201d \u2013 the fact that Avoca had hired a second, younger head chef aged in his forties six months earlier. <\/p>\n
Adjudicator Donal Moore closed the hearing on Thursday and said he expected to be in a position to write out to the parties with his decision in around 12 weeks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Avoca has been accused of going over the top by firing its head chef of 17 years after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,6465],"class_list":{"0":"post-284367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}