Kildare firm must pay former CEO over €180k for unfair dismissal

A Kildare based construction company has been ordered to pay its former CEO over €180,000 after he was fired when he objected to millions of euros being paid to a director at a time when subcontractors had walked out over unpaid bills.

The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) found that Derrin Group Management – based in The Waterways, Sallins - had failed to present evidence of “any grounds” to justify the dismissal of Conor Gilligan (57), whose conduct was “beyond reproach”, according to the WRC adjudicator in the case Bríd Deering.

Mr Gilligan – an engineer with 35 years’ experience, originally from Limerick, and previously boss at the now liquidated Roadbridge - was dismissed without proper notice from his €200,000 a year job as chief executive of the firm at a shareholders’ meeting in November 2024.

He told the WRC he had been appointed CEO of the business - 50 per cent of which was owned by Teamport - in 2022.

Teamport became Derrin’s “primary shareholder” and advanced €15m in loans, he said. Its directors were also board members at Derrin Group Management Ltd.

Although all Derrin’s ongoing projects were “profitable”, Mr Gilligan said there were “periodic cash flow issues” from 2022 to 2024 which became a “considerable concern” in 2024.

“Subcontractors were not being paid or preferred for payment, which resulted in them downing tools,” he told the WRC, which caused delays and reduced profits.

When he discovered that sums of between €1m-€2.3m had been paid to Teamport– and that later the payments were made to the “personal account” of one of their directors – he directed Derrin’s chief financial officer to stop making payments to that director and to prioritise paying construction-related creditors “over all other expenditure”, a move that was agreed at a board meeting on 11 September, 2024.

The director who had received the payments wrote an email to Mr Gilligan five days later complaining that other creditors were being paid ahead of him, the tribunal heard.

After telling the director he had an obligation to pay the suppliers, the director replied the money was his and he would do with it as he wished, Mr Gilligan said.

Gilligan said he had a further concern about the “delayed or non-payment of VAT arising from house sales” amounting to €2.6m, on top of a €3.6m “legacy” VAT debt due to the Revenue Commissioners.

When he called for a board meeting on this, the director refused to allow it, and after he put his concerns about the VAT bills in writing, an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) was called in October 2024 on a motion for his removal as CEO.

On the day of the EGM (8 November 2024) Mr Gilligan recused himself, and the shareholders voted to dismiss him without notice for gross misconduct.

The CEO said he had no opportunity to respond to charges of “financial mismanagement” of one site, doubling the cost projection of a project to build a creche on another site that he owned and “deliberately and consistently misleading the board” at any time before his case was heard at the WRC.

He told the hearing they were “absurd” and “completely unfounded”.

Derrin chief operations officer, Pat McCarthy, said that it was the Teamport directors who decided to dismiss Mr Gilligan.

Those three directors did not attend either of two WRC hearings in December 2025 or February 2026 with company lawyers saying they were all dealing with “personal or family-related health matters” on those dates.

The tribunal noted no medical evidence was furnished.

Bríd Deering found that the company had failed to present evidence of “any grounds - let alone substantial grounds - to justify the dismissal” and ruled the dismissal unfair.

“I am satisfied…that the complainant’s conduct was beyond reproach,” she added, rejecting the firm’s stance that Gilligan contributed to the dismissal.

She awarded Gilligan €125,581.94 – just under three-fifths of which was for his future losses in his new job – for the unfair dismissal.

She awarded him a further €57,844.28 for six months’ contractual notice which went unpaid on termination, which saw the firm liable to pay Gilligan a total of €183,426.28.