WRC awards Frank Conway €1,000 for unpaid annual leave

The Workplace Relations Commission awarded bar manager Frank Conway €1,000 for an annual leave breach, €500 for unpaid public holidays and €480 for a notice breach. In a decision dated 1 December 2023, it also found that his redundancy payment claim could not succeed. Conway worked for Galnesia Limited from August 2020 until the business closed on 27 October 2022. He said he had received no further annual leave pay in 2022, no payment for two public holidays and no notice payment. The company disputed the public holiday claim and acknowledged it had not paid notice. The officer found that Galnesia had not provided Conway with his accrued statutory annual leave for 2022, noting a missing pay week in June. The public holiday and notice complaints were also well founded. The €480 notice award was compensation for the breach. His redundancy claim failed because the COVID-19 lay-off period while he received the Pandemic Unemployment Payment did not count as reckonable service for statutory redundancy. A separate minimum notice complaint was withdrawn at the hearing as a duplicate.