The Data Protection Commissioner's office has recently published a report entitled "Data Protection Investigation in the Hospitals Sector". A full copy of the report is available to view here. The report was was compiled following an investigation undertaken in 2017 by the office's Special Investigation Unit (SIU). The investigation took place [...]
The Government has recently published the Protection of Employment (Measures to Counter False Self-Employment) Bill 2018. The purpose of the Bill according to the draft is to declare the relationship between employer and employee to be a status relationship, to declare the question whether an individual is an employee or [...]
Assistant Data Protection Commissioner, Tony Delaney, has recently welcomed the outcome of prosecution proceedings which concluded at Letterkenny Circuit Court and which were taken by An Garda Síochána against a former civil servant. In this case the defendant was accused of a number of charges of receiving corrupt payments between [...]
Attached is a link to a useful recent decision of the WRC in relation to the dismissal of an employee on long term sick leave. In this case the employee had been absent on sick leave for a total of eighteen months. His GP had furnished his employer with a [...]
In this case (Structured Finance Management (Ireland) Limited and Vadym Kakinin) (ADJ0000-155-A) the employee appealed a previous finding of the WRC that he had not been unfairly dismissed to the Labour Court who overturned the decision of the Adjudicator but found that the complainant contributed 70% to his own dismissal. The [...]
A recent European Court of Human Rights ruling provides that employers must notify their employees in advance if their professional email accounts are to be monitored. The case Barbulescu v Romania concerned a Romanian man who was made redundant after it was found that he had used his work email [...]
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has recently published a general guide on the structure and procedure of a WRC adjudication hearing which readers may find beneficial. The link to the guide can be found here.
The Workplace Relations Commission have recently published a series of decisions in respect of the hot topic of "forced" retirement of employees at the age of 66. In the case of A Book Keeper v A Retail Business ADJ 00005391 it was reported that he complainant had been employed as a [...]
The Courts Act 1981 (Interest on Judgement Debts) Order 2016 (Statutory Instrument No. 624 of 2016) came into operation on 1 January 2017. The rate of interest payable on judgement debts has been substantially decreased from 8% to 2% and no doubt will be well received by judgement debtors. A [...]
The European Commission has recently launched a new initiative to better protect workers against work-related cancer, to help businesses, in particular SME's and micro-enterprises, in their efforts to comply with the existing legislative framework, and to put a bigger focus on results and less on paperwork. Following up on [...]
In the case of Mc Kayed v Forbidden City Limited t/a translations.ie [2016 IEHC 722] the issue arose as to whether or not the plaintiff was an employee of the defendant in the context of a potential claim under the Unfair Dismissal Acts 1977 (as amended). The judgement of Ms [...]
The Education (Admissions to Schools ) Bill 2016 was published on 8th July and is designed to make provision that a school (recognised in accordance with section 10 of the Education Act 1998) must prepare and publish an admission policy which must include a statement that the school shall not [...]
The Au Pair Placement Bill 2016 ("the Bill") was published on Monday this week with the aim of better protecting the rights of young people on cultural and education exchange programmes. The Bill proposes "Au Pair Placements" to ensure no more than 30 hours light domestic help per week in [...]
In the recent case of Sandra Cleary, Ellen Bradley, Joyce Donovan, Angela Carmody, Joan Thompson, Anita Malone, Yvonne Masters, Maureen Andres, Brian McCarthy and James Dowdall v B&Q Ireland Limited the appellants were a number of employees of different branches of the Defendant who sought to challenge an Employment Appeals Tribunal ("EAT") [...]
In the recent decision of Padraig Higgins v Irish Aviation Authority [2016] IEHC 245 , Moriarty J considered whether pursuant to Section 23(1)(c) the plaintiff was entitled to have damages determined by a jury. Background This case concerned a claim by the plaintiff in respect of three emails alleged to have [...]
