Cork-based software firm Cognito HRM has said it has not been in a financial position to pay outstanding contractual notice pay of €2,125 to a worker told she was being let go when it lost funding from Enterprise Ireland last year.
Questioned at the Workplace Relations Commission on Wednesday on the failure to pay the sum, Cognito HRM chief executive Denis Coleman admitted four weeks’ notice was due under the worker’s contract rather than the one week she got, but said: “We haven’t had it to pay, to be honest.”
The worker, former business development manager Amy Horgan, said she had been left “completely out of pocket” because, on top of weeks-long payroll delays, the company had given her nothing in writing about her termination in July 2023 to support a claim for jobseeker’s allowance.
“This along with the fact that I had yet to receive my wages for June, as well as holiday pay owed to me, left me completely out of pocket,” she said.
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She was eventually paid her final pay packet, with a sum for accrued holiday entitlements on July 24th that year — “almost a month late”, she said.
In complaints under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 and the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973, Ms Horgan claims she is owed the €2,125 in outstanding notice pay and a further €1,997.99 in commission.
In exchanges with the Mr Coleman at the employment tribunal today, Ms Horgan said: “You left half the company with no money for nearly a month with no explanation.”
Mr Coleman told the tribunal that payroll had come out of his personal bank account in July 2023 “because that’s the only way she was going to get paid”.
“It was bitterly disappointing for Amy and for me and for everybody else what happened to our business … I’m sorry we ended up in the situation where we are,” he said.
Adjudication officer Úna Glazier-Farmer will issue her decision in writing to the parties in due course.
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