The High Court has dismissed an appeal by hospital network manager Alan Moran over a claimed €15,519 in unpaid pay increases, ruling that the complaint he actually brought concerned an alleged deduction dating from September 2007. The court did not decide whether later deductions from wages could support a separate complaint under the Payment of Wages Act.
Mr Justice Keane said Moran’s complaint to a rights commissioner, lodged on 17 May 2010, described the deduction as “ongoing since 14/9/2007” and sought €15,519 from that date. Moran said a 5% increase due to hospital network managers from 14 September 2007 had not been implemented, contrary to the Act.
The increase was part of a 19.6% package recommended in a public-sector pay review report, to be introduced in three phases. The Government accepted the recommendations in October 2007. The judgment records that the first phase remained unimplemented amid an industrial relations dispute involving the Department of Health and Children and the Health Service Executive. In 2010, the Department of Finance advised the HSE chief executive that the Minister for Finance had refused an exemption from the later statutory prohibition on public-service salary increases.
A rights commissioner rejected Moran’s claim on its merits, finding that not applying a previously sanctioned increase was not non-payment of wages properly payable. The HSE had also raised whether the complaint met the Act’s time limit, but the rights commissioner did not address that issue in the operative part of the decision.
The Employment Appeals Tribunal later rejected Moran’s appeal as out of time. It considered his complaint to concern the increase from September 2007, rather than separate deductions on later pay dates. Moran then appealed to the High Court on a point of law, arguing that the statutory six-month period could run from each later wage payment that omitted the increase.
Justice Keane said the court did not need to resolve that interpretation question. The complaint presented to the rights commissioner did not identify an alleged contravention on any specific date within the six months before 17 May 2010. The appeal therefore failed “in limine” and was dismissed. The judgment said Moran could present a complaint about an alleged deduction on a specified later payment date; it left open whether such a complaint would succeed.