An accountant at a US multinational who was discovered to have incurred €152,000 in “irregular expenditure” on a company credit card has lost a claim for constructive dismissal.
Noelle Lowney, the financial controller at Symmetry Medical Ireland Ltd, trading as Tecomet racked up the bill over the course of five and a half years, with transactions at clothes shops and electronics retailers, the US-based firm told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).
Lowney argued that “extreme working conditions” caused a serious deterioration in her health and she suffered with a “major depressive disorder”, the symptoms of which included “poor judgment”.
She had agreed to repay the money in full, her legal team said.
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Her position was that she was denied her basic rights in a “hostile, procedurally unfair investigation” in which “unverified allegations” against her were “improperly escalated”.
Giving evidence last year, a vice-president at the firm, Ronald Reimer, said he was asked to look into alleged “misuse of the company credit card at the Cork site” and sought records from Ms Lowney ahead of a site visit in June 2024.
“These were not provided in full,” he said. Records were later produced in the form of an Excel spreadsheet “rather than the original statements” and there were “anomalies in formatting and content”, he said.
There were “transactions with retailers such as Brown Thomas, Scarlett, Pamela Scott and Camera World which did not appear to be business related”, he said in his evidence.
The “irregular expenditure” was estimated at first to amount to €35,000, but it was ultimately established that the figure involved was €152,000 over in a review period from September 2018 to the summer of 2024, Mr Reiner added.
The company’s HR manager, Andrew Dalton, told the tribunal that the company had made a formal statement to gardaí about the alleged “theft of company property” to the value of €152,000.
Lowney told the WRC she was “routinely required to work from 8am to midnight, seven days a week”.
She had a lack of trained support staff, she said, while the US-based parent company “exerted significant pressure without regard for the excessive hours she was working”.
These “extreme working conditions” caused a serious deterioration in Ms Lowney’s health, she told the tribunal.
A psychiatrist, Dr Sanchez Capocino Vicens, told the tribunal that in his opinion, Ms Lowney had a “major depressive disorder”, the symptoms of which included “poor judgment”.
The tribunal heard that after Lowney was suspended in early 2024, but the investigation did not progress further after the claimant went absent on sick leave in July 2024.
Her stance was that “unverified allegations were improperly escalated in breach of disciplinary procedures and followed by a hostile, procedurally unfair investigation that denied her basic rights, evidencing a complete lack of fair process”, the tribunal recorded.
Lowney’s evidence was: “I did not go through that process. I did not think it would be worthwhile doing it. I wasn’t feeling well.”
She resigned on 10th August, 2024, and filed a complaint alleging constructive dismissal later that month.
In her decision, adjudication officer Úna Glazier-Farmer found there was “nothing to suggest that the complainant was not afforded fair procedures”.
“The mere commencement of a workplace investigation does not, of itself, constitute reasonable grounds to ground a complaint of constructive dismissal,” Glazier-Farmer said.
The first time Lowney raised any concern about her hours of work or work-related stress seemed to be in her complaint form after she quit, Glazier-Farmer added.
She concluded Lowney had failed to make out a case that her contract of employment had been breached such that a constructive dismissal had occurred and rejected her complaint.
Barrister Ed Shanahan, instructed by Dylan Green Solicitors. appeared for the complainant, while the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (Ibec) represented the company.
