Clerys case: Most serious charge against businesswoman dropped

Prosecutors have dropped the most serious charge brought against businesswoman Deirdre Foley over redundancies at Clerys.

A connected charge brought against Natrium Ltd, which bought out the iconic department store on O'Connell Street, Dublin, in 2015 was also withdrawn on Monday.

Previous owners OCS Operations petitioned the High Court for liquidation on June 12th, 2015. This was followed by the collective redundancies in which 460 people lost jobs; 130 of them were directly employed by Clerys, the court has heard.

Ms Foley was due to go on trial in January on a single charge of impeding a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) inspector and three counts of breaking protection of employment laws.

However, following legal argument on Monday about nondisclosure of earlier drafts of witness statements, the charge against Ms Foley for impeding the WRC on June 12th, 2015 was dropped by the prosecution.

The case was adjourned until February 6th next. All the defendants have indicated that they will be contesting the charges.