Failure to establish a prima facie case of discrimination

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 23/05/2019 Case: Catriona Hughes v National College of Ireland (ADJ-00014991) Keywords: Discrimination and Equality; Equal Pay; failure to establish a prima facie case The case of Catriona Hughes v National College of Ireland (NCI) provides an interesting example of a situation whereby a female employee is ea...

Application of EU Law in Ireland: An Garda Síochána v The Workplace Relations Commission

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 29/03/2019 This month’s article from the Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel focusses on the CJEU case of An Garda Síochána v The Workplace Relations Commission. Written by David Fagan of Business Legal, the article considers how European Union law MUST be applied in Ireland. What we learn in th...

Duty of Care to Provide a Safe Place of Work: McCarthy v ISS Ireland Limited

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 23/10/2018 Cases from the courts continue to emphasise the duty of care on employers to take reasonable steps to protect their employees from the reasonably foreseeable harm which may arise as a result of treatment by other employees, even where such behaviour might not amount to bullying in the workplace. Th...

De Minimis Rule: Dillon v Board of Management of Catholic University School [2018] IECA 292

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 26/09/2018 Dillon v Board of Management of Catholic University School[2018] IECA 292 is a recent decision of the Court of Appeal which demonstrates that the Courts take the reputational implications of a final written warning seriously and that an employee is certainly entitled to litigate the imposition of s...

Procedural Fairness: Towerbrook Limited t/a Castle Durrow Country House Hotel v Eugene Young 2018 IEHC 425

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 23/08/2018 This month’s article from the Labour/Superior Court Case Law Review Panel was written by Deirdre Malone, Partner, Ronan Daly Jermyn. It concerns an unfair dismissal claim brought by an employee engaged as a general handyman (“the employee”) against his employer, (“Castle Durrow”) and its blatant b...

Litigation Privilege: Does it Extend to Non-Legal Advisors?

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 27/07/2018 Whilst the recent judgment of the Court of Appeal in Aer Lingus plc v The Minister for Finance and others ([2018] IECA 222) did not arise in an employment law context, the judgment is useful in its consideration of whether litigation privilege can be claimed over documents from an earlier set of pr...

Time Limits: When Should an Extension of Time be Granted to Bring a Claim?

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 28/06/2018 Subject to some exceptions such as claiming a redundancy lump sum, the general time limit to bring a claim under employment legislation is six months from the date of the alleged contravention in question. Prior to the introduction of the Workplace Relations Act 2015, a claimant could seek an exten...

Labour Court Decision: Dr Enda Loftus v Martine O’Sullivan EDA1825

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 18/05/2018 This recent Labour Court (the “Court”) decision considered an appeal of an Adjudication Officer’s decision (ADJ-00005793) in accordance with section 83(1) of the Employment Equality Acts 1998 - 2015, overturning that decision and awarding Ms O’Sullivan compensation of €27,500. The case brings to t...

Objective Bias in Investigations: Heinz-Peter Nasheuer v NUI [2018] IECA 79

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 20/04/2018 This matter came before the Court of Appeal by way of an appeal brought on behalf of National University of Ireland Galway (‘the Respondent’) against a decision of the High Court (Baker J) to accede to Professor Nasheuer’s (‘the Applicant’) application for an interlocutory injunction to restrain an...

The Reasonable Belief of the Employer in Establishing "Guilt or Innocence"

Posted in: Labour & Superior Court Case Law Review Panel on 23/03/2018 Background to the case The worker was employed as a General Labourer from January 2014 to October 2015 when he was dismissed for gross misconduct on 5th October 2015. A complaint of unfair dismissal was lodged which was adjudicated at the WRC in February 2017. The claim for unfair dismissal was up...