Tech firm unable to pay €2,125 for worker’s notice

The chief executive of a software firm says it has not been in a financial position to pay outstanding contractual notice pay of €2,125 to a worker it let go after losing funding from Enterprise Ireland last year.

Questioned today on the firm’s failure to pay the sum, Cognito HRM chief executive Denis Coleman admitted four weeks’ notice was due under the worker’s contract rather than the one week she got.

But he told the Workplace Relations Commission today: “We haven’t had it to pay, to be honest.”

The worker said she had been left “completely out of pocket” because on top of weeks-long payroll delays, the company had given her nothing in writing about her termination to support a claim for jobseeker’s allowance.

The tribunal heard the worker was eventually paid her back wages from the CEO’s personal account.

In complaints under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 and the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973 Cognito HRM Ltd, trading as WorkCompass, former business development manager Amy Horgan claims she is owed the €2,125 in outstanding notice pay and a further €1,997.99 in commission more than eight months after she was let go last summer.

The company explained to her at the time it had lost funding from Enterprise Ireland that it had been “relying on”, according to her complaint form, which was opened at hearing.

Ms Horgan told the WRC that having already been told she was being “let go” from her €34,000-a-year job on 29 June 2023, the company informed her she would not get her wages for June that year.

They were already several days overdue by that point.

“Despite numerous requests by email over two weeks Mr Coleman had failed to respond or supply me with any written communication on the situation or a letter of termination… which in turn left me unable to receive jobseeker’s allowance,” she said.

“This along with the fact that I had yet to receive my wages for June as well as holiday pay owed to me left me completely out of pocket,” she said.

She was eventually paid her final pay packet, with a sum for accrued holiday entitlements on 24 July that year – “almost a month late”, she said.

Addressing Mr Coleman, Ms Horgan added: “You left half the company with no money for nearly a month with no explanation.”

Adjudicator Úna Glazier-Farmer questioned Mr Coleman directly on the payment of notice under the worker’s contract.

He replied: “Yeah, look, I gave Amy as much notice as I was able to give; as Amy has said the payroll that she received, albeit three weeks late, it didn’t come from the company account, it came from my account, right, it came from my account because that’s the only way she was going to get paid.

“I wish I was in a position to give longer notice, but the reality is at the time I simply wasn’t,” he added.

Ms Glazier-Farmer asked: “And the company’s still trading – have you not paid her since? Are you accepting that she should have gotten four weeks’ notice?”

“I accept that Amy’s contract of employment says that it’s four weeks,” he said.

“Why haven’t you paid her the four weeks?” Ms Glazier-Farmer asked.

“We haven’t had it to pay, to be honest,” Mr Coleman said.

“Look, it was bitterly disappointing for Amy and for me and for everybody else what happened to our business. I’m sorry for that, and I’m sorry for the distress and everything else that it’s caused to Amy and everybody else. I’m sorry we ended up in the situation where we are,” he said.

Ms Glazier-Farmer will issue her decision in writing to the parties in due course.