The Labour Court upheld the decision against Dermot O’ Driscoll in his protected disclosures appeal against Dairygold Co-Operative Society Ltd. The determination was dated 10 April 2019.
O’ Driscoll, a former Dairygold Group Financial Controller, argued that correspondence about concerns he had raised before the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 amounted to penalisation. Dairygold disputed that he had made a protected disclosure or suffered penalisation, and also challenged his standing to bring the case.
The Court found there was no protected disclosure after O’ Driscoll wrote that he was making no allegation of wrongdoing by any person or company. Without a disclosure of wrongdoing, it said, the information could not qualify as a protected disclosure. The Court therefore did not consider whether he had been penalised, and upheld the Adjudication Officer’s decision.