Workplace Relations Commission (WRC)<\/a> on Tuesday. <\/p>\nDarren Feehan said he suffered \u201chorrific\u201d financial losses after taking over a public house in Celbridge when its former operator was about to shut down the business in April 2025. <\/p>\n
The worker, Mary O\u2019Brien, said she \u201cnever received any holiday pay\u201d and was \u201clet go with three days\u2019 notice\u201d in August 2025, after 11 months work at the pub. <\/p>\n
She told the WRC she was seeking 199.2 hours\u2019 accrued holiday pay, as that was the limit of the WRC\u2019s jurisdiction in the case. <\/p>\n
However, she said she ought to have received 620 hours\u2019 holiday pay over the course of her employment under two different employers at the pub, first the Mucky Duck Ltd, and then with Feehan\u2019s company, following a transfer of undertakings. <\/p>\n
Feehan\u2019s firm, Darren Feehan Bars Ltd, held the pub licence under the trading name \u201cFeehan\u2019s of Celbridge\u201d, according to official records. <\/p>\n
He told the WRC his firm took over in April last year, but then shut down the establishment four months later at the end of August. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve accrued losses of \u20ac192,000 in the space of four months, which is kind of horrific. Jesus, I wish Mary well, nothing personal to Mary, I hope she gets what she\u2019s owed,\u201d Feehan said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe company\u2019s about to be struck off. There\u2019s no assets,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing there, there\u2019s nothing there that\u2019s left. Everything was bled out of the company,\u201d the businessman continued. <\/p>\n
\u201cI took the whole lot,\u201d he said of the takeover. \u201cAll I can say is, the way it was presented to me wasn\u2019t the way it turned out to be, and there was a lot more at play. <\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say too much with the media present. You don\u2019t lose \u20ac192,000 in four months in a public house without something being horrendously wrong,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He said he had \u201csuffered a lot personally\u201d due to what happened in the business. \u201cI\u2019ve suffered enough with it personally. I\u2019ve nothing,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
He said his pub company was \u201cjust about to be struck off\u201d as it had not traded for over a year. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe company owes me \u20ac192,000 personally. There\u2019s more chance of an eagle flying in the window,\u201d he said. \u201cThe banking\u2019s wound up, the Revenue\u2019s wound up, there\u2019s only me in it waiting for the strike-off,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He went on to say he had been through \u201cabsolute hell\u201d, and expressed concern about the WRC\u2019s decision on O\u2019Brien\u2019s statutory complaint being registered as a judgment against the company.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that\u2019s the case, Jesus Christ, I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do,\u201d Feehan said. <\/p>\n
Adjudication officer Andrew Heavey said the company might owe O\u2019Brien money in relation to her statutory complaints, \u201cbut I imagine the entity has other creditors\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, which obviously can\u2019t be fulfilled,\u201d Feehan said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, Ms O\u2019Brien will just become one of those creditors,\u201d Heavey said. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien said she was \u201csorry\u201d for Feehan. Heavey then closed the hearing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A publican says he lost nearly \u20ac200,000 in four months running a bar in Co Kildare and has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-618511","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\/618511","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=618511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}