A plasterer who hired an accountant to investigate his wages when he discovered a “discrepancy” on his Revenue account has won nearly €17,000 for his employer’s contravention of construction industry pay rules.
Kenplast Ltd has been ordered by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) to pay the compensation to worker Joseph Lennon for breaches of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2015 and the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994.
Mr Lennon’s trade union representative, Barry Murphy, of the Operative Plasterers & Allied Trades Society of Ireland (OPATSI), said the worker noticed in March 2025 that there seemed to be a “discrepancy between pay received and that returned on his Revenue account”.
Mr Lennon said in evidence that he was struggling to see what exactly he was being paid because he had been provided with no payslips initially, and later with payslips that had “insufficient information”.
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Company director Keith Kenna had referred Mr Lennon to the company’s accountant, who “assured the complainant there was nothing wrong”, the tribunal was told.
Mr Lennon engaged his own accountant, who did not agree with the company’s position there was “nothing amiss”, the WRC was told. The worker and his accountant met the company accountant in April 2025, it was submitted.
Questions posed about “fluctuations and discrepancies in the gross income returned by the respondent for taxation” were not answered to Mr Lennon’s satisfaction, and the meeting ended “without resolution”, the tribunal heard.
Figures presented to the tribunal in support of the worker’s case assessed his hourly pay as being €19.85 on the basis of a 39-hour working week.
However, the minimum hourly rate of pay for a craft worker under the sectoral employment order (SEO) for the construction industry was €2.39 higher, at €22.24, between November 2024 and May 2025, the period covered by the complaint, the WRC noted.
Adjudicator Kara Turner found the company had failed to pay Mr Lennon the minimum hourly basic pay set out in the Sectoral Employment Order (Construction Sector) 2023 in breach of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2015, and awarded him €3,500 for the breach.
Further breaches of other construction industry employment orders included the company’s failure to have a pension scheme, a sick pay scheme, and a death-in-service scheme in place, Ms Turner ruled. She awarded Mr Lennon a further €10,000 in compensation for those breaches under the 2015 Act.
She also ruled the company had failed to provide Mr Lennon with a written statement of his terms of employment in breach of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994, and awarded him further compensation of €3,460.
The total awarded by the tribunal for the rights breaches in the case was €16,940.
Mr Lennon’s evidence was “uncontested”, Ms Turner noted.
When the case was called in September this year, a representative of the company, Lena Kenna, asked for it to be put back because of the “unavailability” of company directors, Keith Kenna and Ciaran Kenna, that day, she wrote.
The men were “on a job”, Ms Kenna told the tribunal.
Ms Turner wrote that the company had been given a fortnight’s notice of the hearing by the WRC and that a request for postponement had already been rejected by the tribunal. She said there were no “exceptional circumstances” justifying a delay to the case proceeding and heard the complaints without the company directors.
