A FORMER security company manager has been awarded higher damages after a judge rejected an appeal by his former employers against a €20,000 award made to him for unfair dismissal.
Judge Anthony Hunt decided yesterday that security operations manager Noel Collins was entitled to a further €7,000 compensation in addition to the €20,000 he was already awarded by the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
Tom Mallon, counsel for Mr Collins (46) , Drynam Drive, Kinsealy, Co Dublin, told the Circuit Civil Court that he had been sacked as operations manager with Top Security Ltd, Ballymount Road, Dublin, for what the company considered had been gross misconduct.
He had been dismissed for having allowed a security guard to “doss” in a Dublin city centre office block shared by Anglo Irish Bank and ESB while he slept off the effects of a few late-night drinks before starting a 6am shift in the premises.
The judge had been told that when Top Security control noticed a breach in security at St Stephen’s Court, Dublin, a supervisor had gone to investigate.
Supervisor Darren Bailey told how he had searched the premises at 2am on November 7th, 2006, and found the security guard had been sleeping in one of the offices. He had smelled of drink, but had not been falling down drunk.
Mr Bailey had called his manager Mr Collins at home and together they discussed allowing the security guard to remain in the building until his shift started.
Mr Bailey had undertaken to make a final fitness check on him just before 6am and found him in uniform, unshaven but capable.
The judge said there had been no other trained member of staff available to Mr Collins to stand in for the errant security guard if he had been turfed out in the middle of the night.
He said Top Security had just won the contract for St Stephen’s Court only weeks before the incident and Mr Collins had feared the contract would be lost if there had been no one to open up the office block. The security guard concerned and Mr Collins had been dismissed.
“The solution devised by Mr Collins may have been an imperfect one, but I cannot agree it amounted to misjudgment or even misconduct let alone gross misconduct,” the judge said.
He said that without someone to open the building in the morning the company could have lost the contract.
As it happened, there had been no serious consequences for Top Security as a result of Mr Collins’s decision.