Employees stole €3,000 from employer and set up rival business

OVER €3,000 has been returned to the owners of Rene Cusack’s Fishmongers, by two   former employees who pleaded guilty to the taking of money over a four week period in 2009. 50-year-old Seamus Mahon, Griffith Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, and 48-year-old Dermot Fitzgerald, with an address at Cluain Dara, Clonmacken, appeared in Limerick Circuit Court  having pleaded guilty to  seven charges of theft on dates between May 23 and June 18, 2009.

The court was told that security cameras had been installed on the premises after the owners and senior financial staff became suspicious of irregularities in the accounts.
Subsequently, the two men were caught pocketing money and issuing false credit notes against accounts that customers were paying to the long established fishmongers.
The two men, Judge Carroll Moran said as he finalised matters, were employees of Rene Cusack’s for over 20 years, and while the sum of money was relatively small, they were involved in a betrayal of trust.
He said he understood the exacerbation felt by the owners that following their dismissal, the two men involved set up a rival fish supply business in Limerick, within six weeks of their dismissal, and they had taken a case of unfair dismissal to the Employment Appeals Tribunal.
He noted that both were said to be of good character and must now suffer the stigma of carrying a criminal conviction for dishonesty, and he also took into account that they had made restitution.
The Probation Offenders Act was applied, and both Mahon and Fitzgerald were bound to be on good behaviour for a period of three years.