The High Court has struck out an appeal by Juan Miguel Marino Camarasa against a Labour Court decision that his dismissal by Tyco Ireland Limited was not unfair. The appeal was brought outside the statutory 42-day period, and the court held it had no power to extend that deadline.
Justice Siobhán Phelan also considered whether an extension would have been justified if the court had that power. She accepted that Mr Camarasa intended to appeal in time and had made a procedural mistake when submitting his papers. However, she found he had not identified a stateable ground of appeal, so the test for an extension would not have been met.
Mr Camarasa worked as a Lead User Experience Architect for Tyco in Cork from 2015. After the company told staff in June 2020 that its Integrated Offerings Unit was being dismantled, his role was made redundant on 19 June, along with 11 other members of the unit. Tyco said the redundancies formed part of a global restructuring. Mr Camarasa received statutory redundancy pay but did not sign a draft agreement offering an enhanced package in return for waivers and six-month restrictive covenants.
He complained to the Workplace Relations Commission in September 2020 under the Unfair Dismissals Act. An adjudication officer found in July 2021 that his employment had ended through a bona fide redundancy and that he was not unfairly dismissed. The Labour Court upheld that decision in March 2022. It considered complaints about the absence of a composite redundancy letter, enhanced severance terms and alternative employment, and found the dismissal was not unfair.
Mr Camarasa sent a notice of motion to the High Court Central Office on 5 May 2022, within 42 days of the Labour Court decision. The court accepted that it was stamped and served on Tyco’s representatives the following day. But it named Tyco as respondent rather than the Labour Court, and the Central Office did not issue it. A revised notice naming the Labour Court issued on 27 May, after the deadline.
The appeal raised alleged breaches of the Protection of Employment Act 1977 concerning collective redundancies, and a provision of the Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (COVID-19) Act 2020. Justice Phelan said those claims had not been made before the WRC or Labour Court, so they could not be determined in this appeal on a point of law. She said the court had no jurisdiction to decide whether the circumstances met the statutory definition of collective redundancy, because that factual issue had not been heard by the bodies competent to decide it.
The court struck out the appeal and said it would hear the parties on consequential matters. The judgment did not determine whether the redundancies constituted a collective redundancy or whether Tyco breached the relevant legislation.