The chief executive of a green energy technology firm has secured orders for over €75,000 in salary he says he was “unlawfully” denied amid a boardroom dispute.
Colin Kelly secured the sum on foot of statutory complaints under the Payment of Wages Act 1998 against Gyrogy Ltd.
At the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), Kelly alleged his pay was stopped after he complained in October and November 2024 about “threats made at a board meeting against him and his family”, the tribunal noted.
He wrote to the company with a formal grievance on in February 2025 saying he “would no longer work full-time without any pay”. It was a “temporary survival measure”, he told the WRC, and “not a resignation or waiver of pay”.
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His evidence was that he cut his hours to one day a week at the start of March that year and ceased working entirely in mid-May, the tribunal noted.
The value of Kelly’s salary was disputed by the parties. Kelly argued that it had been “agreed in writing” in 2021 that he would start on €200,000 a year, rising to €225,000 by 2023.
This was according to a business plan linked to the shareholders’ agreement, he told the WRC.
Provision was made in the budget for a for a €24,000-a-year pension contribution and the same sum again for social insurance in the plan, he submitted.
However, he told the WRC he only drew down €150,000 a year while the company was “pre-revenue”, up to October 2024.
“[I] voluntarily drew less than the contractual amount as a temporary cash flow accommodation, not a variation,” Kelly told the hearing.
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Darach MacNamara, appearing instructed by Ahern Rudden Quigley LLP, said: “If the complainant decided to reduce his own pay in the financial interests of the company ... that was a matter for him alone and that is what he did.”
“It was the board alone that had the authority to approve any salary raises,” counsel submitted.
MacNamara added that by deciding “unilaterally” to cut his hours later on, there was a “strong argument to be made that wages are not payable” to Kelly.
In her decision, published on Thursday by the WRC, adjudication officer Ewa Sobanska wrote that it seemed the pay claim “forms only one aspect of a wider dispute” between the parties that was outside her jurisdiction.
She found favour with neither of the salary figures advanced by the parties.
The business plan could was not something Mr Kelly could use as a “source of enforceable rights”, she wrote.
However, she found she was “not satisfied, in the absence of supporting evidence” that there had been a “voluntary reduction” of salary by Kelly and ruled his salary was €200,000.
Sobanska found Kelly was entitled to four months’ unpaid salary for November 2024 to February 2025, €66,666.68
Further redress for 10 and a half weeks while he was working one day out of five brought the total awarded to €75,127.
