An accountancy firm has said a veteran bookkeeper it was meant to keep on when it bought out her employer of 45 years was \u201cforgotten\u201d in an \u201cadministrative error\u201d during the takeover.<\/p>\n
The bookkeeper, Siobhan Fanning, along with receptionist Sandra Breen, both allege they suffered ageist discrimination, unfair dismissal and other employment rights breaches when MG Business Advisory Services Ltd merged with another Drogheda accountancy practice, Callan Stringer & Co, last year.<\/p>\n
The women, who are aged in their 60s and worked together for four and a half decades, say they were excluded from the business transfer \u2013 while a younger colleague was reassured about her future in the merged business and kept on.<\/p>\n
Their complaints, under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994, the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the European Communities (Protection of Employees on Transfer of Undertakings) Regulations 2003, are all denied by the company.<\/p>\n
Breen joined the firm that would become Callan Stringer & Co as a secretary in September 1979, and Fanning started work there in October 1980, as a bookkeeper, the tribunal was told.<\/p>\n
Fanning said she was left \u201cworried\u201d about the future of her job after the two principals of the firm announced their retirement and a plan to merge the office with MG at a meeting on February 19th, 2025. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t told nothing would change,\u201d Ms Fanning said in evidence to the Workplace Relations Commission on Monday. She said her bosses told the meeting that MG was \u201cvery modern, they\u2019re high-tech, they use different systems\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was said to me they don\u2019t use Excel. It was very dismissive, they don\u2019t do bank reconciliations, they don\u2019t do any of that. I did say in my head: \u2018Well, that\u2019s not my work.\u2019 I tried to listen and take it on,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s case is that a remark was made at the meeting that MG was \u201ca younger company and probably a bit more IT-oriented\u201d, it was submitted by their barrister, Paul D Maier, who was instructed by DJM Legal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose at my age … in this whole process I do feel I have become personal non grata. I felt invisible, and I did feel very marginalised and excluded,\u201d Fanning said.<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s case is that one of the owners of the practice met alone with a younger colleague of theirs who was \u201cgiven reassurances that there\u2019s a place for her in the new company\u201d and that she would \u201cthrive\u201d there.<\/p>\n
Maier said there were no private meetings with his clients and they were \u201cnot given similar assurances\u201d ahead of the proposed transfer.<\/p>\n
The respondent\u2019s representative, Jack Lundy of Peninsula Business Services, said in a submission on Fanning\u2019s complaints that the staff were told at the meeting that \u201cthings would always continue as they had under the same terms of employment\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mark Gibbons, the owner of MG Business Advisory Services, gave similar assurances at a meeting with the Callan Stringer & Co staff on March 5th, 2025, Lundy submitted further.<\/p>\n
However, both Fanning and Breen said in evidence that they were so affected by stress at the time that they were signed off work by their doctors in mid-March 2025.<\/p>\n
Both remained on certified medical leave when the merger took place on April 30th, 2025, the tribunal heard.<\/p>\n
Lundy said a \u201cnegative atmosphere\u201d at the workplace after the February 19th meeting \u201cemanated\u201d from Fanning and Breen, as the women were \u201cunhappy [they] wouldn\u2019t be getting a redundancy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Fanning said on this point: \u201cI was disappointed that after 45 years I hadn\u2019t been treated a little bit more respectfully. It had nothing to do with redundancy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gibbons said he posted letters confirming the transfer of the women\u2019s employment to their home addresses. Fanning\u2019s evidence was that she received no such letter.<\/p>\n
Breen and Fanning told the tribunal they checked their online Revenue records in June 2025 and saw that while their employment with Callan Stringer was marked as ceased, they had not been registered as employees of MG Business Advisory Services.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand how three well-educated individuals could not just comply with TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings [Protection of Employment]) Regulations,\u201d Breen said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt made me feel my 46 years working with these gentlemen … what was it all for?\u201d Breen added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t hear anything until a solicitor\u2019s letter on August 6th, [which] only then bought to our attention that the complainant hadn\u2019t been registered with Revenue,\u201d Lundy said in relation to Fanning\u2019s complaints.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Gibbons will give evidence that this was an administrative error on his part. The company was going through a unique transfer of a kind it had never dealt with before … and in the transfer, it was forgotten to register the complainant,\u201d Lundy said in a submission on Fanning\u2019s complaint.<\/p>\n
Maier said: \u201cWe submit this is basically giving someone their P45 through a digital format.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adjudicator Eileen Campbell adjourned the hearing after hearing the evidence-in-chief of Breen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An accountancy firm has said a veteran bookkeeper it was meant to keep on when it bought out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-526259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526259","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=526259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}