{"id":611692,"date":"2026-09-01T23:52:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T23:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/611692\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T23:52:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T23:52:21","slug":"fish-shack-founder-awarded-e75000-at-labour-court-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/611692\/","title":{"rendered":"Fish Shack founder awarded \u20ac75,000 at Labour Court \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A businessman ousted for objecting to the decisions of his new bosses after the Dublin restaurant group he established was rescued from examinership has won \u20ac75,000 for unfair dismissal following a five-year legal battle.<\/p>\n

Padraic Hanley had alleged that in 2020 he was forced out at PBR Restaurants Ltd, the operator of a group of Dublin restaurants, for objecting to what he saw as \u201cwrongdoing\u201d at the company following the takeover in 2019. <\/p>\n

The Labour Court<\/a> found in favour of a complaint by Hanley alleging whistleblower penalisation under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977. <\/p>\n

The restaurant group was run by the Hanley family until August 2019, when it was placed into examinership and two of its restaurants, Ouzos in Dalkey and Kelly & Coopers in Blackrock, were sold off to separate investors. <\/p>\n

PBR restaurants retained four cafe units trading under the Fish Shack brand following the takeover, and Hanley and three of his sons were retained as staff. <\/p>\n

Hanley said in evidence that he wrote an email to company director Colin Pardy on March 3rd, 2020, objecting to a proposal to paying a chef \u201ccash in hand\u201d \u2013 citing concerns about such an arrangement being \u201cuncovered by Revenue\u201d. <\/p>\n

The following week, on March 9th, 2020, Hanley said he made a second protected disclosure when Pardy said he wanted to open the company\u2019s Fish Shack cafe \u2013 located on the East Pier at D\u00fan Laoghaire harbour \u2013 despite an \u201corange storm warning\u201d. <\/p>\n

Ten days later, he added, he said he learned a workman had been brought in to deal with a gas leak at the same location who was not a registered gas installer. <\/p>\n

Hanley said he again objected to paying the workman without an invoice and to engaging a contractor without the proper certification. A fourth protected disclosure concerned the sending of late-night emails by management, the court was told. <\/p>\n

\"\"Will the upcoming budget drive inflation and increase costs for Irish households?<\/p>\n

He was laid off on the stated basis of the Covid-19 pandemic on March 19th that year, the court heard. Neither he nor his sons were called back when the other staff were, the court was told. <\/p>\n

Hanley\u2019s original complaint was rejected by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC)<\/a> in 2021 and again on appeal to the Labour Court. However, the High Court ruled the Labour Court \u201cfell into errors of law\u201d and directed the appeal be reheard. <\/p>\n

A three-member division of the Labour Court, chaired by Louise O\u2019Donnell, ruled that the four communications made by Hanley amounted to protected disclosures. <\/p>\n

As Hanley was therefore shielded by whistleblower law, the normal 12-month minimum service requirement for a case under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 was set aside, the court noted. <\/p>\n

Since the dismissal was subject to a statutory complaint, it fell to PBR Restaurants to prove that the dismissal was fair \u2013 but the company did not appear before the Labour Court, the decision recorded. <\/p>\n

The Labour Court\u2019s finding was that \u201cbut for making the protected disclosures, the complainant\u2019s employment would not have been terminated\u201d. <\/p>\n

It upheld his complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act, and awarded him \u20ac75,549 for his losses.<\/p>\n

The award was based on Hanley\u2019s full loss of earnings due to unemployment for an 11-month period up to July 2021, when he started working as a consultant and had reduced losses. <\/p>\n

The award by the Labour Court is in addition to more than \u20ac117,000 in redress granted to Hanley\u2019s three sons by the WRC in recent years after the company declared them redundant. Their dismissals were all ruled unfair by the WRC. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A businessman ousted for objecting to the decisions of his new bosses after the Dublin restaurant group he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,42042,6465],"class_list":["post-611692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-labour-court","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611692","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=611692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}