A tech firm employee who signed up for a job with a €150,000-a-year salary, but ended up “unable to heat her home” having received just €11,500 in 11 months of employment has won a claim for her unpaid wages.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has awarded €126,000 in back pay to the unidentified worker under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 in an anonymised decision published on Thursday.
The employee told a tribunal hearing in Ennis, Co Clare that she was persuaded by the CEO of the tech firm to leave a permanent, pensionable job for the new position at his business in March 2025.
She was the mother of a child with a disability and had spent decades working in special education, she said. She was “enthusiastic” to get involved with setting up support services for children with mental health difficulties, which included the development of an app.
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However, there was trouble with salary payments from the start, she told the WRC hearing.
In late March and early April 2025, the CEO told her payroll was delayed because someone from accounts was “away”, she said.
In late April, the CEO told her the payroll delay was because his bank accounts had been “blocked or flagged” because of “the amount of incoming investor funds”.
The worker said she thought a team brought in from the UK for a week in May 2025 to work on app development had not been paid either.
In June, the worker said the CEO rented “a huge luxury office in a prominent location” and told her the office rent was “covered” for the next 36 months by an investor.
The claimant said she had been waiting months for wages by then and had to take her car off the road because she could not afford to insure it.
Her evidence was that the CEO “repeatedly urged staff on more than one occasion to continue to wait, assuring them that their wages would be paid in full”.
The complainant quoted the CEO as saying repeatedly that payment was “absolutely guaranteed”, the tribunal noted.
There was an agreement in place that the worker was employed as “head of wellbeing development” with a gross annual salary of €150,000, the worker said.
She gave evidence of receiving five payments between November 6th and January 28th of this year of between €500 and €5,000, totalling €11,500.
She said her mortgage had fallen into severe arrears, she was behind on electricity bills and loan repayments, and that her family had suffered “considerable hardship”.
The worker’s evidence was that she was “unable to heat her home during freezing weather” and was at risk of the property being repossessed.
She also suffered “marital difficulties as a result of the financial strain” she said, adding that her husband left her during the period at issue in the complaint.
Adjudicator Ewa Sobanska wrote in her decision that it was “regrettable” that the respondent company “chose not to attend” the hearing.
On the basis of the worker’s uncontested evidence, she found the worker was owed 11 months’ salary at €12,500 a month, less the €11,500 that was paid.
She directed the payment of gross unpaid wages of €126,000 to the worker.
