Compassionate Leave - An Employer's Obligations

An employee’s bereavement is a difficult situation to manage for both an employer and for the employee’s colleagues. We asked Stephen Holst of McCann FitzGerald to examine the key points that you should know.


1. The Law

Whilst force majeure leave under the Parental Leave Acts 1998 and 2006 entitles certain employees to leave for urgent family reasons requiring the employee’s presence, it provides no such leave entitlement to employees in the event of the death of a loved one.

In the absence of a compassionate leave policy, an employee is, strictly speaking, not entitled to time off to grieve, attend at funerals or to deal with family business (except in certain circumstances as set out