"Road workers entitled to €1.5m over conditions, court rules", 18 Mar 2016

A High Court judge has ruled 27 Portuguese workers who worked here on a road project are entitled to recover damages, estimated at some €1.5m, plus interest, over breach of their employment contracts with three Portuguese companies that traded here as the RAC Éire partnership. There should be no “race to the bottom” where rights and conditions of workers are concerned, Mr Justice David Keane said. 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...RAC Éire traded here as a contractor or sub-contractor to a consortium, Bothar Hibernian, comprising three companies — Mota-Engil (Portugal); Michael McNamara and Company and Coffey Construction Ltd.