The chief executive of the Irish Music Rights Organisation (Imro) has asked the High Court for an injunction restraining his dismissal for alleged gross misconduct.
Adrian Gaffney is seeking to restrain his dismissal and to be permitted to continue in his position pending the outcome of the full hearing of his action against Imro. A date for the full action has yet to be set.
Mr Justice Thomas Smyth will continue hearing the injunction application today.
Brian Murray SC, for Mr Gaffney, said his client became chief executive in 2000. Imro employed 30 people and had 5,000 members.
On June 29th last, Mr Gaffney was purportedly dismissed from his position following a hearing of an Imro board disciplinary committee of June 27th, counsel said. For some seven months prior to that, Mr Gaffney had been complaining that there was a concerted effort to remove him from his position. Mr Murray said members of the board had been going around pubs last December saying they were going to get rid of his client.
There was also an unusual sequence of events where a member of the board successfully blocked attempts to investigate complaints made by his client, counsel said. In addition, a senior employee had a document outlining a reconfiguring of the organisation with that employee in Mr Gaffney's job.
These events came to a head on June 13th when Mr Gaffney was told of an intention to convene a disciplinary hearing one week later, counsel said. The object of that meeting was to inquire into allegations of gross misconduct against his client over matters concerning "historic events".
A request by Mr Gaffney to have the hearing adjourned had been refused.
Mr Murray said Mr Gaffney strongly rejected all the grounds for his dismissal which arose from a number of allegations concerning his business expenses, allegedly misleading the board in relation to a salary advance to an executive and an alleged failure to bring to the attention of the board a PricewaterhouseCoopers report.
Paul O'Higgins SC, for Imro, said there was no case for Mr Gaffney to return to his workplace. Mr Gaffney had made allegations that all but three of the board were persons who could not sit on the disciplinary board because they were biased or part of the "conspiracy" to drive him out of his job. It would be unprecedented to allow him back into his job in those circumstances, counsel said.