Headford Mart ordered to pay former manager €26,250 for unfair dismissal

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The Workplace Relations Commission ordered Headford Co-operative Mart Limited to pay Joyce Holleran Whelan €26,250 after finding she was unfairly dismissed. It found the mart had not proved her dismissal was wholly or mainly due to redundancy, and that it had failed to address a series of serious complaints and concerns she submitted.

Holleran Whelan said she faced bullying and intimidation after becoming interim mart manager. She alleged that she was assaulted outside the mart with an electronic cattle prod on 4 December 2021, and that four staff left on 11 December; one of them, she said, dismantled the mart’s IT systems after objecting to her assault complaint. These accounts were reported as her submissions to the WRC.

The WRC rejected her separate complaint that she had been penalised for making a protected disclosure about the mart’s finances. It found insufficient connection between the alleged disclosure and the subsequent actions she said amounted to penalisation.