{"id":659469,"date":"2026-08-27T15:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T15:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659469\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T15:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T15:42:19","slug":"senior-manager-at-indian-information-technology-firm-denies-company-lied-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659469\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior manager at Indian information technology firm denies company \u2018lied\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A senior manager at a global Indian IT firm has denied his company \u201clied\u201d to a client about the position a former Irish employee would hold on a project team. <\/p>\n

He said the worker wasn\u2019t meant to have internal documents suggesting his responsibilities went beyond the firm\u2019s work in Ireland \u2013 and asked how he got them. <\/p>\n

The former employee, IT project manager Derek Canning, is pursuing a claim under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, challenging his alleged redundancy from HCL Ireland Information Systems Ltd in 2024. <\/p>\n

The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC)<\/a> heard on Thursday that the Indian-headquartered global IT giant let go all seven of its staff and contractors, including Mr Canning, in 2024. <\/p>\n

It was after it was forced to agree a \u20ac1 million \u201cdiscount\u201d on a big IT project for packaging firm WestRock following months of delays to the project, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n

The WRC has heard that in 2022, HCL was engaged to set up a manufacturing software and central database system called enterprise resource planning (ERP) at 35 of its sites in Europe, including Limerick and Belfast. <\/p>\n

\"\"Will the upcoming budget drive inflation and increase costs for Irish households?<\/p>\n

HCL set about establishing and training two teams of 33 people each to staff the project \u2013 one for Continental Europe, the other for Ireland and the UK, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n

A central point of dispute in the case is the nature of Canning\u2019s position on the project. <\/p>\n

Canning\u2019s case is that he was hired as a commercial project manager, working remotely to deliver modules of the ERP system dealing with finance, shipping and customer service at sites in Ireland and the UK. <\/p>\n

The firm maintains Canning was a manager for Ireland, but when the project came under cost pressure, his responsibilities were given to a senior technical manager, an Indian national based in the UK. <\/p>\n

Cross-examining Ram Samant, an associate vice-president at the firm, Canning produced what he said were screenshots of organisational charts from 2023 which showed him as \u201cthe commercial project manager\u201d on the \u201cgreen team\u201d covering Ireland and the UK, and the senior technical manager \u201coperations\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhere did you get those screenshots? You\u2019re not supposed to have them,\u201d Samant said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI worked on the project. Are you worried about them?\u201d Mr Canning replied. There was no answer from the witness. <\/p>\n

Samant said the documents Canning exhibited were \u201cwhat we showed to our customer to build confidence that we had a team in place\u201d, but that the final structure of the project team was different. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo you lied to the customer?\u201d Canning said. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, we don\u2019t lie to customers; we position to customers,\u201d Samant said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not positioning, that\u2019s lying,\u201d Canning said. <\/p>\n

In his evidence in chief, Samant said the first site went live with the new technology package in April 2024, and at that point, WestRock \u2013 then set to merge with Smurfit Kappa \u2013 decided to \u201cconserve money\u201d with a smaller team and a slower timeline. <\/p>\n

The case, before adjudication officer Davnet O\u2019Driscoll, has been adjourned pending the arrangement of another hearing date. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior manager at a global Indian IT firm has denied his company \u201clied\u201d to a client about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,80,81],"class_list":["post-659469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-work","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117168240232195375","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}