Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Boobalan  Kirubakaran

The Blue Haven Hotel

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 27 of the Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997

CA-00078673-001

16/12/2025

The complainant was employed as a chef by the Blue Haven Hotel, Kinsale. He commenced employment with the respondent in August 2021.

He has submitted two complaints, which despite being submitted almost simultaneously (about two hours apart) were listed to be heard as separate adjudications, although heard together.

The first complaint relates to the failure of the respondent to pay the complainant for excess hours allegedly worked and this has been addressed in ADJ 64919.

The second complaint is ADJ 69921 CA-00078683 which is addressed here. This was described on the complaint form as relating to the failure to give the complainant notice of changes in his working hours.

There are a number of preliminary issues.

The complainant resigned from his employment on March 22nd, 2025, but did not submit his complaint to the WRC until December 16th, 2026, some nine months later but for a few days. The time limit for submitting a complaint is, in general, six months.

Secondly, the respondent has been named as ‘The Blue Haven Hotel’ but this has been challenged as being incorrect. The respondent has submitted that the correct trading name for the entity which employed the complainant  was Cross Blue Holdings Ltd (now in liquidation; the liquidator attended the hearing).

There is a further issue as to whether this complaint has been made under the correct statute.

The complainant could not give any satisfactory explanation for why this complaint was made. His primary focus was on the complaint regarding excess hours which is addressed in ADJ 64919.

Respondent; preliminary issue.

Mr. John Healy the court appointed liquidator gave evidence on affirmation on the correct company name. He confirmed the correct name of the respondent as Cross Blue Holdings Ltd.

Mr. Ciaran Fitgerald, former Managing Director of the hotel, gave evidence on affirmation. He too confirmed the correct company name.

He denied that the complainant was owed outstanding wages for the hours worked. He stated that the complainant was in the habit of leaving work without ‘clocking out’ and this had given rise to the appearance that he was working longer hours than he had. His failure to comply with the business’ rules in this regard had been the subject of disciplinary action against the complainant.

Ms. Catherine O’Keeffe gave evidence on affirmation.

She had dealt with the complainant and submitted that the first email from him was on March 3rd, 2025. This continued until May 25th at which point it concluded.

She said that this only related to the weeks in arrears worked by the complainant. She stated that he did not raise any issue about excess hours in January.

There are a number of issues arising with this complaint.

The first relates to the fact that the complainant did not present any facts to support the complaint and seemed to say that he had made this second complaint in error.

The second relates to the time limits issue. I have fully addressed this in ADJ 64919 involving the same parties, and the reader is referred to that Decision, specifically the jurisprudence arising from the Labour Court Decision in Cementation Skanska (Formerly Kvaerner Cementation) v Carrol Determination DWT 0338 and in other cases and what may be summarised as the ‘explain and excuse’ test.

As noted in ADJ 64919 these are statutory time limits and not some administrative guidelines decided by the WRC for the better management of its scheduling of cases or some other reason.

Therefore, this must inform the approach to the second limb of the test set out above in that any argument for delay must also excuse the delay.

This could happen if an issue giving rise to a possible referral had not crystallised within the time limits, or vital information which disclosed the grounds for a complaint had been withheld from a complainant.  But a matter referred to the WRC is, if anything more easily withdrawn than it is referred and a party who decides simply that they will wait for the outcome of communications with their employer or the exhaustion of internal workplace machinery before making a referral will not survive the Labour Court test set out above if they exceed the six month limit.

The complainant’s problems do not end there. He has failed to particularise his complaint, and he has named the wrong respondent.

While he did apply to have this corrected on February 23rd, 2026, this may really only be addressed at a hearing. There is some latitude in making small adjustments to a party name with the consent of that party but this is obviously more difficult where the wrong party has been named and the identity of the correct respondent was known to the complainant

Accordingly, I find that the complaint has not been made within the required time limits and is not within jurisdiction. It is not well founded.

For the reasons set out above Complaint CA-00078673-001 is not well founded

Time limits