A single mother of three who said she had to pull her children out of their after-school activities last year after being unfairly sacked from her administration job at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) has been awarded €14,500 for her time out of work. Monsurat Balogun, a project co-ordinator, was dismissed by the professional accreditation body for specialist doctors in March 2025 on the stated basis of “serious performance failings”.The RCPI’s lawyers admitted at a hearing earlier this summer that Balogun’s dismissal was unfair on procedural grounds. “All my friends in work, nobody was talking to me. All the people I thought I had, I didn’t have anyone,” Balogun said. Balogun said that after her sacking she was left “having to explain to my kids having to pull them out of their after-school activities” because “I couldn’t afford it”.Balogun said she had difficulty finding work in the same field as she felt she could not approach her former employer for a reference. “I completely changed my speciality in my career because of the way everything went down, and I could no longer do what I loved to do, so I had to do something else to feed the kids.”Balogun said she found it difficult to “get back into work, the space of work” following the dismissal. “I have to second-guess myself because of what they did to me. A year after that, you’re coming to me to say I was unfairly dismissed?” she added. Adjudication officer Penelope McGrath said: “I have a general idea there was a workplace problem, and the complainant was found wanting and was dismissed, but the employer is now acknowledging that was an unfair dismissal.” The adjudicator characterised the RCPI position as: “Yeah, hands up, it was a bad process,” and added: “You’re not saying we shouldn’t have dismissed her.”“No,” Jason Murray, for the respondent, said. He said that after taking legal advice, the employer had arrived at the view that there were procedural issues with the dismissal. Under cross-examination by Murray, who was instructed by Jennifer Cashman of RDJ Solicitors on behalf of the respondent, Balogun set out that she had applied for nine vacancies between July and September 2025 in various administrative customer support and events management roles. When she said she had difficulty finding work again in the same field without a reference, Murray put it to her she had not sought one from her ex-employer. “This is not fun for me. I was unfairly dismissed. How do you think I feel going to the HR manager to ask for a reference. Who is going to give me the reference?” she said. Balogun said she had then completed training, including a work placement, and had secured the required certification to return to her former career as a healthcare assistant. She expected to find new work paying €25,000-€30,000 a year, she said. In a decision published on Thursday, the adjudicator, McGrath, recorded that a disciplinary process took place and “serious performance failings” were identified on Balogun’s part. McGrath found Balogun had made “positive efforts to find employment” from April to September 2025. Murray had argued any redress ought to be capped at four weeks’ pay in compensation as he said Balogun had “not complied with her obligations pursuant to the Unfair Dismissals Act” to make efforts to seek new work when holding a former employer liable. He cited long-standing case law setting out a duty on a claimant in an unfair dismissal case to “employ a reasonable amount of time each weekday in seeking work” in this regard. McGrath wrote: “There is no clear definition of what is meant by ‘seeking work’ in this context, though it has often been suggested to me that it means applying for jobs.” While this was “part of the expectation”, it also meant “making inquiries of friends or contacts” and “chasing up other leads”. She concluded Balogun was “not resting on her laurels”. The worker’s unemployment was “front and centre” in her mind even though her home life had been “thrown into disarray” because she couldn’t pay for a childminder, McGrath wrote. “The complainant has made some difficult choices and should be commended for the decisions she has made,” McGrath wrote.