X’s appeal cuts Gary Rooney’s unfair dismissal award to €201,458

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

The Labour Court reduced Gary Rooney’s unfair dismissal award from €550,131 to €201,458 following an appeal by his former employer, Twitter International UC, now named X Internet Unlimited Company. The ruling was reported on 17 April 2026.

Labour Court chairwoman Louise O’Donnell found that Gary Rooney was unfairly dismissed in December 2022 after he failed to respond to Elon Musk’s “Fork in the Road” email. The court reduced compensation for losses to date from €350,131 to €169,417 and for future losses from €200,000 to €32,041.

The email, sent on 16 November 2022, asked staff to click “yes” if they wanted to be part of the new Twitter. After Rooney did not click, the company emailed him on 19 November acknowledging what it described as his decision to resign. O’Donnell found that the company had set an arbitrary deadline, supplied insufficient information for an informed decision and treated an employee as having resigned when no intention to resign had been communicated.