Former finance director says job review was 'an ambush'

A former finance director at Ernst & Young in Dublin described his performance review as “an ambush” designed to “get rid” of him, an employment appeals tribunal heard yesterday.

Garry O’Rourke alleges he was forced to leave his job in November 2011 because of treatment amounting to constructive dismissal. In evidence Mr O’Rourke said he was promoted to director in 2006, heading up Ernst Young’s Irish valuations and business modelling work.

Before joining the Dublin office in 1999, he had worked for the company for two years in Bermuda.

Between 2006 and 2009, he said he had “covered” for the partner who was his immediate boss over two maternity leaves.

Following a restructure in 2008, Mr O’Rourke said Adrian Browne was appointed, with Mr O’Rourke’s boss now reporting to Mr Browne.

Mr O’Rourke said returning from study leave in May 2009, a colleague informed him the partner to whom he reported “was gone from the business”.

Mr O’Rourke said “nothing was said to anybody” and this created “uncertainty”.

Told to take holidays due to him or else he would lose them, Mr O’Rourke said that while on leave in December 2009, Mr Browne emailed him to say he “would not be involved in the first phase” of a Nama project for which he had pitched.

“I was extremely disappointed about that . . . I would have expected to have some role on it considering I put an awful lot of work into it,” he said.

In his 2010 performance review, Mr Browne said if he was to rate him on the negatives only from anonymous feedback from colleagues, he would “rate me a ‘one’ [out of five] and march me out the door”. He said he was instead rating him a “two”.

Mr O’Rourke told the hearing that in the previous 11 years, he had got “predominantly fours”. “I thought this was an ambush, he just wanted to get rid of me and he was using this as a way to do it,” he said.

Mr Browne also told him he would “not be leading valuations and business modelling”, he said. “That was a demotion. My route to partner was gone really,” he said. “My whole world collapsed.”

The hearing resumes in September.