A SOCIAL CARE worker has been awarded just under €3,000 from his former employer after it emerged he had been sacked over revelations emerging from his Garda vetting.
The man commenced work with his employer, a care home, in December 2017.
He was let go less than one month later.
The man, making his case at a hearing of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), said that he had made the home aware of his conviction at the time of his interview in November of 2017.
He subsequently volunteered his Garda Vetting Form from his previous employer, who he had worked for for three years and was leaving in order to take up the new position.
Garda vetting is required under Irish law for all people aiming to work with either children or vulnerable adults.
After the man submitted his GVF, his new employer acknowledged the receipt of same and asked him to commence work two weeks later on 11 December, which he did.
One month into that employment, on 3 January 2018, the received a call from the care home’s HR manager telling him not to attend work that day because of a disclosure on the GVF.
‘Treated very unfairly’
The following day he received an email telling him that his complaint had been terminated. He appealed the decision and said he was being “treated very unfairly”. That appeal was denied.
No representative from the care home attended the WRC adjudication hearing. However, emails submitted by the man showed the home was of the opinion that, while the man had admitted to a 2001 conviction in his interview, he had not mentioned another conviction dating from 2013.
Following the man’s dismissal he remained out of work for three months until April, whereupon he started a new role on slightly better terms.
Ruling on the matter, adjudication officer Roger McGrath stated that the home had not, in his opinion, been unfair in dismissing the man as “the existence of previous convictions had serious implications for the Respondent”.
However, he said the home had been remiss in not granting the man an initial hearing to state his case, and that this was a break with the home’s obligation to utilise fair procedures.
As a result, McGrath concluded that the man had been unfairly dismissed, and recommended that he be awarded one month’s pay, or €2,984.82.
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