Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC) hearing into a complaint by Clonee woman Ashley Staunton under the Employment Equality Act 1998 taken against The Lunch Bag Ltd, challenging her dismissal in 2024.<\/p>\nThe firm is a big contractor on the scheme, serving more than 700 schools and 109,000 children a day \u2013 a fifth of the primary schools in Ireland.<\/p>\n
The tribunal was told this week that Staunton was one of four staff brought in by The Lunch Bag Ltd when it started work at Our Lady of Hope on November 18th, 2024.<\/p>\n
That day the fire alarm was triggered by the opening of one of the new ovens and the school was evacuated, she said in evidence on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The following Monday she and her colleague were on their way to deliver cold lunches when the fire alarm went off and the school was evacuated again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were told a special-needs child had set off the fire alarm,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She and a coworker went back to the kitchen and started the oven to heat the other meals \u2013 but could \u201csmell something burning\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I opened up the oven, there was a flame in it, so I switched off the oven,\u201d Staunton said. The fire alarm had not gone off at that point, she said.<\/p>\n
She told her colleague: \u201cWe need to go and get the principal and tell her it\u2019s a real fire,\u201d she said. Both she and the vice-principal had phoned for the fire brigade, and she was told to end the call by the vice-principal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe caretaker told us there was no fire … He silenced the alarm,\u201d she said. \u201cHe told the vice-principal to cancel the fire brigade, that there was no need, but the fire brigade was like: \u2018No, we still have to come in case the fire spreads,\u2019\u201d Staunton said.<\/p>\n
By then, the school had been evacuated for the second time that day.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, Staunton said, the senior fire officer at the scene met staff. She said the first thing he mentioned was: \u201cWhoever switched off the oven did the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fire officer took issue with the lack of a fire map for the premises and said it had been \u201cwrong\u201d to attempt to cancel the fire brigade call-out \u201cbecause it was a school\u201d, Staunton added.<\/p>\n
She said regional manager Brendan Robinson attended the school and called her to a meeting later that day. He said: \u201cThe principals don\u2019t want anyone to know there was a fire here today,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
As the worker\u2019s vetting had not come through, she was informed by Robinson on November 28th that she was to go to work in the junior school reheating \u201ccubbyhole\u201d, the tribunal heard.<\/p>\n
Staunton said she told Mr Robinson: \u201cI\u2019m claustrophobic. That\u2019s going to cause havoc on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staunton said she had received therapy for her fear of tight spaces, but Robinson asked her to \u201cgive it a go\u201d. <\/p>\n
Staunton admitted under cross-examination by Robin Hyde, for the respondent, that she said nothing earlier to her employer about her medical condition \u2013 including in a health questionnaire.<\/p>\n
Robinson said after the fire he told the four staff at the school: \u201cDon\u2019t engage in any conversation on the incident on WhatsApp.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe principals didn\u2019t want it getting sensationalised that there was a fire in the school and they didn\u2019t want it putting people off the idea of the hot meal in the school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked to identify any performance issue on Staunton\u2019s part, Robinson said the fire on November 25th \u201cwas caused by the oven being loaded incorrectly\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, he could not say who loaded the oven and accepted no performance issues were documented or raised with Staunton.<\/p>\n
Counsel for the complainant, Elaine Davern-Wiseman <\/p>\n
said her client was \u201cdismissed because she is claustrophobic\u201d and that her condition was \u201cheightened\u201d by her employer\u2019s failure to provide fire-safety training.<\/p>\n
Adjudicator Orla Jones said the complainant side could submit to her a further medical report and gave four weeks for a further exchange of legal submissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Staff on the school hot meals scheme were told not to talk about an oven fire that prompted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,616,61,60,28230,6465],"class_list":{"0":"post-403920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-dublin-15","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-primary-level","13":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403920","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=403920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}