ADJUDICATION OFFICER DECISION

Adjudication Reference:  ADJ-00069057

Parties:

Complaint(s):

Date of Adjudication Hearing:  11/08/2026

Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer:  Breiffni O'Neill

Procedure:

In accordance with Section 41 of the Workplace Relations Act, 2015 following the referral of the complaint to me by the Director General, I inquired into the complaint and gave the parties an opportunity to be heard by me and to present to me any evidence relevant to the complaint.

The hearing of this complaint was held in conjunction with three other complaints made by the Complainant, namely a complaint under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act (See ADJ 58361) as well as two other complaints made, under the Sick Leave Act and the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 (See ADJ 63979).

The complaint under the Safety, Health & Welfare at Work Act, 2005 was the first in time. At the time that complaint form was completed, the Complainant was represented, and it was the Complainant's representative who completed and submitted that form on the Complainant's behalf, the Complainant being unwell at the time. Eir Evo Technologies Limited T/A Eir Evo was named as Respondent on that form. The two further complaint forms, one of which included the instant complaint, were completed and submitted by the Complainant personally, without representation, and named the same Respondent, Eir Evo Technologies Limited T/A Eir Evo. The Complainant's contract of employment, furnished in advance of the hearing, names the employer as Hibernia Services Limited T/A Eir Evo.

Procedure

These four complaints were heard together, the Complainant having been employed, and the events grounding each complaint having arisen, in the one employment.

A representative appeared at the hearing on behalf of Hibernia Services Limited, notwithstanding that Hibernia Services Limited was not, at that point, a party to the proceedings. No person appeared, and no submissions were made, on behalf of Eir Evo Technologies Limited, the entity actually named as Respondent on each of the three complaint forms.

At the outset of the hearing, I drew to the attention of those present a discrepancy between the Respondent named on each of the three complaint forms and the identity of the employer appearing on the Complainant's contract of employment. Both the Complainant and the representative for Hibernia Services Limited were afforded a full opportunity to address the point.

Having heard the issue raised, the Complainant applied to amend each of the three complaint forms so as to substitute Hibernia Services Limited T/A Eir Evo for Eir Evo Technologies Limited T/A Eir Evo as Respondent. The representative for Hibernia Services Limited objected to the application and did not consent to the proposed amendment. I proceeded, with the consent of those present, to hear submissions on the application and on the related question of jurisdiction, that issue being potentially dispositive of each of the four complaints.

Preliminary Issue: Identity of the Respondent and Application to Amend

Summary of the Complainant's Position

The Complainant stated that each complaint form correctly identified the trading name under which he had been employed, namely "Eir Evo", and that the only error lay in the legal entity appended to that trading name. He stated that this was a technical and readily explicable error, and that it fell short of a case where an entirely unconnected or unrelated party had been named. He stated that I should exercise a discretion to permit the amendment sought given that he had included the name of the correct Respondent in his submissions that he had made after he had filed the complaint form.

Summary of the Respondent's Position

The representative for Hibernia Services Limited opposed the application to amend. It was stated that Hibernia Services Limited was not a party to the proceedings as constituted, that Eir Evo Technologies Limited is, and was throughout, a separate and distinct legal entity from Hibernia Services Limited, and that Eir Evo Technologies Limited had never employed the Complainant. It was stated that an Adjudication Officer has no jurisdiction, and no discretion, to substitute one legal entity for another as Respondent to a complaint, and that the fact that a trading name descriptor appeared on the complaint forms did not cure the more fundamental defect that an identifiable, existing, and wholly distinct legal entity had been named as Respondent in circumstances where it was not the Complainant's employer.

Findings and Conclusions

I have considered the submissions made and the documentary evidence opened at the hearing, including the Complainant's contract of employment. My findings apply equally to each of the four complaints, all of which arise from the same employment relationship and the same underlying error as to the identity of the Respondent.

I find, on the basis of the contract of employment before me, that the Complainant's employer at all material times was Hibernia Services Limited T/A Eir Evo, and not Eir Evo Technologies Limited T/A Eir Evo. I find that Eir Evo Technologies Limited is not a mere trading name or unincorporated trading style but is itself a separate legal entity, distinct in law from Hibernia Services Limited. I make no finding as to, and no evidence was opened to me establishing, whether or to what extent Eir Evo Technologies Limited itself trades publicly, or is otherwise known, under the style Eir Evo; the only evidence before me on that point is that the appendage T/A Eir Evo appears on each of the three complaint forms, as completed by or on behalf of the Complainant, and separately on the Complainant's contract of employment with Hibernia Services Limited.

I turn first to the application to amend. That application is, in substance, indistinguishable from the application considered by the Labour Court decision in PFP Ireland High Performance Systems Limited v William McKeever UDD2334, which I opened to the parties. In that case, as here, the Complainant applied at the hearing before the Adjudication Officer to substitute the correct employer for the Respondent named in the originating complaint form; the Adjudication Officer declined to accede to that application; and the Labour Court, on appeal, upheld that refusal. The Court held that it is a creature of statute, possessing no inherent jurisdiction, and that neither it nor, by necessary implication, an Adjudication Officer possesses a discretion to amend the title of proceedings so as to substitute one legal entity for another as Respondent. The Court held that submissions grounded in the absence of prejudice to the correct employer, that entity's notice of the proceedings from their outset, and the shared registered particulars and business activities of the two companies, did not confer a jurisdiction that did not otherwise exist. The Court further held that the Supreme Court's judgment in Halal Meat Packers (Ballyhaunis) Limited v The Employment Appeals Tribunal [1990] ILRM 292, relied upon in that case in support of the application, did not assist, as it concerned the exercise of a statutory discretion conferred on the Employment Appeals Tribunal in respect of an entirely different procedural default.

I adopt that reasoning and, for the same reasons, decline the Complainant's application to amend the three complaint forms so as to substitute Hibernia Services Limited for Eir Evo Technologies Limited as Respondent. I note, in addition, that Hibernia Services Limited was afforded, and availed of, a full opportunity to be heard on the application through its representative, and opposed it; no question therefore arises as to whether it was denied fair procedures in that regard.

I also considered whether the appearance of the descriptor T/A Eir Evo on each complaint form alters my conclusion on jurisdiction. I am satisfied that it does not. The Labour Court considered a closely related submission in Lawlor's Hotel v Deborah McMahon EDA2555, in which the Complainant had named only a trading style, Lawlor's Hotel, as Respondent, that trading style having also appeared on the letter terminating her employment. The Court there acknowledged that some evidential weight might attach to the fact that the dismissal letter had issued in that trading name, but nonetheless held that the Complainant's error could not be excused, and that it had no statutory basis to rectify her complaint form having proceeded against a trading name rather than the legal entity, Burke Hotels Limited, which had in fact employed her.

The position in the present case is, if anything, clearer against the Complainant than that considered in EDA2555. There, the Respondent named on the complaint form was not a legal entity at all. Here, by contrast, the Complainant has named, in terms, an existing and distinct legal entity — Eir Evo Technologies Limited — which is capable of being sued, and of being complained against, in its own right, and which has been established, on the evidence before me, not to have been the Complainant's employer. Whatever the position as to Eir Evo Technologies Limited's own trading activities, on which I make no finding, the appearance of a shared descriptor on the complaint forms does not alter the fact that the entity named — correctly and specifically — is not the correct Respondent. I do not accept that the presence of a trading style descriptor on a complaint form can operate to confer jurisdiction over a named legal entity that was not, in fact, the Complainant's employer, any more than the presence of a matching trading style descriptor sufficed to save the complaint in EDA2555.

I have also considered whether the circumstances of this case fall within the narrow category of case contemplated by Auto Depot Limited v Vasile Mateiu UDD1954, as considered and distinguished in EDA2555. I am not satisfied that they do. The Complainant was furnished with a written contract of employment correctly identifying Hibernia Services Limited as employer, and no issue as to literacy or command of English arises. I note, further, that the Complainant was represented at the time the first of the three complaint forms was completed, that form having been completed by the Complainant's representative rather than by the Complainant personally, and that the error in naming the Respondent originated in that professionally-completed form was then replicated by the Complainant, without representation, on the two later forms. The involvement of a representative in the completion of the originating form makes the error, if anything, less readily explicable than the circumstances considered in Auto Depot, where the complainant had at no stage been assisted by a representative or furnished with any documentation identifying his employer. Accordingly, even on the most generous view of the narrow exception recognised in Auto Depot, it has no application here.

I find, therefore, that Eir Evo Technologies Limited T/A Eir Evo was not the Complainant's employer at any material time, that I have no jurisdiction to determine any of the four complaints against it, and that I possess no statutory power to amend these proceedings so as to substitute Hibernia Services Limited T/A Eir Evo, or any other entity, as Respondent in its place, in respect of any of the four complaints.

Decision:

Section 41 of the Workplace Relations Act 2015 requires that I make a decision in relation to the complaint in accordance with the relevant redress provisions under Schedule 6 of that Act.

Dated:   20th of August 2026

Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer:  Breiffni O'Neill

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