The vice-principal of a Dublin school has won €40,000 for constructive dismissal after arguing that his position became untenable when he was “caught up in some power struggle” among the administrators of the Clonskeagh Mosque. Noureldin Abdelgawwad secured the award on foot of a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against the Al Maktoum Foundation CLG, the operator of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland. The school offers supplemental education in Islamic studies and the Arabic language to children and adults. It is located next to Ireland’s largest mosque on the Roebuck Road, Clonskeagh, which was under the same management. In a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) filed last year, Abdelgawwad said he quit his job of more than a decade at the foundation on April 9th, 2025, because of “severe breaches of trust, professional interference, mistreatment, and a complete breakdown in the employer-employee relationship”. He told WRC adjudicator Penelope McGrath he had “become caught up in some power struggle” when a new board was installed following the death of the Al Maktoum Foundation’s founder. The tribunal noted this was followed by a “rupture” in the organisation that “very publicly came to a head” in April 2024. Abdelgawwad said difficulties began to arise in the workplace in the autumn of 2024, when he said his salary was withheld and “diverted to other uses”. The school, which charged tuition fees, was barred from taking cash payments under new financial arrangements not applied across the organisation. Abdelgawwad said there was “a delay” in reconciling receipts with school expenses, as the management of the cultural centre had asked that receipts be held back “due to their financial difficulties”. A dispute arose in January over the control of a school database system set up by Abdelgawwad, the tribunal heard. The vice-principal said he and the principal resisted handing over the personal data of students and their parents to the new board at the direction of chief executive Ahmed Hasain. Most of the board members were based in the United Arab Emirates and Abdelgawwad said he believed handing over the information would amount to a breach of the families’ data rights.He said he was “repeatedly pressured” to hand over the material by Hasain in March 2025 and was subject to threatening and unprofessional communications. Salary payments were again delayed in March 2025, and the complainant quit on April 9th, the tribunal heard. “There was a complete breakdown in trust as between the complainant and the board who had, through its intermediary operated to diminish and sideline the complainant in pursuit of an unknown objective,” McGrath wrote. “It was not reasonable to expect the complainant to continue working under these conditions after the best part of 14 or 15 years’ service.” McGrath noted that Abdelgawwad went back to work part-time at another Islamic school, earning some €35,000 less annually than in his former full-time post. She awarded him €40,000 for his financial losses from the constructive dismissal, and a further €1,000 under the Payment of Wages Act, 1991.