Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> in a decision published on Thursday. <\/p>\nCollins considered himself \u201ca high-performing employee\u201d, as he had passed probation after joining in August 2023 and earned around \u20ac60,000 in 2024 before his dismissal \u2013 roughly doubling his basic annual salary of \u20ac30,000 with what he made on commission. <\/p>\n
Collins came under scrutiny after a customer complained that he had been asked to park a car he intended to trade in \u201caround the corner\u201d, company sales manager Dermot O\u2019Sullivan said in evidence.<\/p>\n
The customer had called it \u201can unusual way of doing business\u201d, O\u2019Sullivan said. He said it \u201craised concerns about deviations from standard procedures\u201d. <\/p>\n
Company director Kevin O\u2019Leary said he started looking at sales records after the customer complaint and discovered that Collins seemed to have \u201cdeleted or edited\u201d an entry in a spreadsheet recording trade-ins. <\/p>\n
Other records \u201csuggested the transaction may have been arranged for a family member of the complainant\u201d and that Collins had tried to put the car outside the company systems, he said. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Leary said he also found Collins \u201cincorrectly recorded ownership details\u201d for another vehicle, a Renault Kadjar. <\/p>\n
He said the dismissal was for \u201cgross misconduct involving alleged fraudulent trading of a trade-in\u201d and that Collins had \u201cadmitted the allegation\u201d. <\/p>\n
Finance director Kevin Cronin said Collins admitted that the Renault \u201chad ultimately gone to his mother\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe incident involved a breach of trust so fundamental that past performance could not outweigh it,\u201d Cronin said. <\/p>\n
Collins said he was called to a meeting with company director Kevin O\u2019Leary where he was \u201caccused of buying a car directly from a customer at a higher price\u201d. <\/p>\n
Having been presented with allegations \u201clate in the day\u201d, he said he was \u201cgiven 15 minutes to decide whether to resign or be dismissed\u201d and was put under \u201csevere stress\u201d. <\/p>\n
Collins denied \u201cany fraudulent intent\u201d and said that buying trade-in cars was \u201cunderstood by staff to be a perk of the job\u201d. <\/p>\n
He claimed the true reason was because the dealership\u2019s management had taken the view he was not \u201cflexible\u201d enough following a dispute about taking leave on a Saturday. <\/p>\n
Adjudicator \u00dana Glazier-Farmer wrote in her decision that the dealership \u201cmay have had reasonable grounds to form the belief [Collins] misconducted himself\u201d. <\/p>\n
However, she found the employer had failed to adhere to either its own disciplinary rules or the statutory code of practice for workplace disciplinaries. <\/p>\n
There was an \u201cabsence of impartiality\u201d in the process as O\u2019Leary carried out the investigation and decided on the sanction, she wrote. She also identified the short notice of the disciplinary meeting and a lack of documentation of the process decision to dismiss as issues. <\/p>\n
Ruling the dismissal unfair, she decided it was \u201cjust and equitable\u201d to award Collins \u20ac10,000.<\/p>\n
This was in view of his \u201cfailure to adequately mitigate his losses\u201d by looking for new work and his contribution to the dismissal, she wrote. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A car salesman accused of theft for buying a customer\u2019s trade-in for a higher price in an \u201caround…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,46,61,60,14835,6465],"class_list":{"0":"post-308663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cork","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-motors","13":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308663","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=308663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}