Irish Employment Law: What We Learned Last Quarter (Q1 2022)

Legal Island's Learning and Development team have collated all of the updates we sent our 1,600+ Irish Employment Law Hub subscribers in Q1 2022 and listed some of the most important and interesting ones below.  Click on the links to find out more:

• It's back! Legal Island's Comparative Employment Law Table made a welcome return to the Employment Law hub. The purpose of this table is to provide a handy reference guide, complete with links to relevant legislation and other documents in the hope that this will assist you to understand and deal with the differences in employment law developments between the three jurisdictions.  Very useful I’m sure you’ll agree! Ciara Fulton and Siobhra Rush of Lewis Silkin spoke with Legal Island’s Rolanda Markey in a recent webinar and discussed new ways of working and family-related rights in GB, NI and Ireland.  You can listen again to the webinar here. 

• The conflict in Ukraine is having a devastating impact on many lives with repercussions felt around the world. Whether their workers or their families are directly affected, employers will want to help their people as best they can during this troubling time. The CIPD has collated resources to support employers and people professionals in this task. SHRM also compiled a helpful bank of articles on how the crisis is affecting employees and how employers can respond. It has also been reported by RTE that there has been a spike in cyber-attacks seen since start of Ukraine invasion. And if cyber-security is your thing, join us at our Data Protection event in May.

• We marked International Women’s Day on 8th March with an ‘In Brief’ article focussed on all things female. International Women’s Day was also marked by the publication of two Codes of Practice from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission to help eliminate pay inequality and tackle workplace harassment and sexual harassment.  Dr Gerry McMahon outlines how to handle the new sexual harassment code here.  Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman, also announced details of the introduction of gender pay gap reporting in Ireland to mark International Women’s Day.  The regulations will require organisations with over 250 employees to report on their gender pay gap in 2022.  Employers will choose a ‘snapshot’ date of their employees in June 2022 and will report on the hourly gender pay gap for those employees on the same date in December 2022.

• A Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Bill 2022 has been published which will enhance and strengthen the protections for whistleblowers in Ireland.  The Bill will transpose the EU Whistleblowing Directive and will extend the scope of the legislation in providing protections for volunteers, shareholders, board members and job applicants for the first time.  The Bill is making its way through the legislative process and Legal Island will be holding an event on the new law. 

• The National Minimum Wage increased from 1 January 2022 and the new rate for 20 years and over is €10.50 although it has been reported that minimum wage increases have led to reductions in hours of work.

• A new public holiday was awarded which will take place on St Brigid’s day each year – the first Monday in every February.

• The Draft Scheme for the right to request remote working has been published and many of the questions that employers have about the scheme are answered in these articles from A&L Goodbody and Lewis Silkin.  However the scheme has met a lot of criticism, particularly around the grounds for refusal of a request.  As part of the preparation for remote working it was announced that there are now 200 remote working hubs across the country.  

• The Cabinet has approved the details of the Final Design principles for the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System for Ireland which is probably timely as it has recently been reported that only two thirds of workers have some form of pension coverage.  While on the subject of pensions it has been recommended that the qualifying age for the State Pension should remain at age 66.

• It was confirmed that the Payment of Wages (Amendment) (Tips and Gratuities) Bill will not apply to cash tips.

These and many more stories can be found on the Legal Island Employment Law hub here.