Reinstatement rather than compensation is the preferred option of an ex-editor of the Evening Echo who was sacked as image manager with Examiner Publications, an Employment Appeals Tribunal heard yesterday. Mr Cormac O'Hanlon, solicitor for Mr Edwin Lyons, said his client was seeking reinstatement but Examiner Publications' solicitor, Mr Fergus Long, said the post had been filled, and that given the reasons for Mr Lyons's dismissal, re-engagement was not possible.
Earlier, the chairman of the tribunal, Mr Dermot Sheehan, refused an application by Mr Long to order a new hearing on the grounds that the tribunal might have been influenced after seeing a company document.
Mr Long said the document - a confidential memo of a management meeting in which reference was made to Mr Lyons - might have prejudiced his client's case. He said that questioning by a tribunal member, Ms Breda Fell, indicated that she might have seen the document before it was presented to the tribunal.
Mr O'Hanlon described the application as "astonishing". It was coming on the fourth day of a hard-fought dispute, and while Examiner Publications had the resources for a rehearing his client did not.
Ms Fell said she had been mistaken about already being familiar with the memo. She was actually referring to another document.
Mr Sheehan said he was satisfied no member of the tribunal had any knowledge of the memo before its disclosure, and he refused Mr Long's application for the tribunal to disqualify itself.
The tribunal heard evidence from Mr Lyons denying he had taken holidays without permission.