Portuguese road workers set for €1.5m award

A High Court judge has ruled 27 Portugese workers who worked here on a road project are entitled to recover damages, estimated at €1.5m, plus interest, over breach of their employment contracts with three Portugese companies that traded here as the RAC Eire partnership.

There should be no “race to the bottom” where rights and conditions of workers are concerned, Mr Justice David Keane said yesterday. Among several findings, he ruled the firms engaged in “systematic and deliberate” underrecording of hours of work, leading to underpayment of the workers in breach of their employment contracts.

He also found the defendants were not entitled to deduct €17.50 daily (€520 monthly) from the workers’ wages for accommodation of a “deplorable, even dangerous” standard.