An employee who was sacked by Dunnes Stores after being filmed drinking a diet cola and smoking in an off-licence stock room has been awarded €15,000 by the Employment Appeals Tribunal.
It found that Ms Ann McCollum was unfairly dismissed from her job at the company's Clonmel store in Co Tipperary.
The company, it said, had adopted an unfair procedure in the way it questioned Ms McCollum after the incident in October 2001.
It had also failed to disclose to her the existence of video evidence until the case came before the tribunal a year later.
This was unfair and did not give the employee an opportunity to address the evidence on the video before she was dismissed.
However, the tribunal also found that Ms McCollum had contributed to the decision to sack her by failing to be forthcoming with reasonable explanations for her actions in the first instance.
The tribunal had been told that Ms McCollum was filmed smoking and drinking a diet cola by a covert camera that had been installed in the stock room.
Questioned after the incident, she admitted smoking in the room.
She said she had used a lighter from the store's display, but had put it back afterwards. A witness for the company said she initially denied consuming any minerals, but when told she had been observed drinking a diet cola, she said the bottle had been there for a while.
Ms McCollum, who had worked for Dunnes for five years, told the tribunal that the cola had been bought for her by a colleague.
She had been reluctant to explain this when questioned by her employer because she initially could not remember it, and she did not want to bring her colleague's name into the matter.
She accepted that smoking was against company rules. However, she said "everyone did it", and a named manager allowed it.
