Important Notice

The Labour Court received communication last week indicating that the Dept. of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation have blocked the renewal of a serving Deputy Chairman’s warrant of appointment.

The Labour Court is a statutorily independent judicial body but is funded by the Exchequer from funding allocated through the Dept. of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment and ultimately approved by the Dept. of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation.

From this week, this means that the Labour Court will be reduced to one operating division.

This unexpected development will have a severe impact on the functioning of the Labour Court.

It will, unfortunately, result in serious delays to the hearing of individual employment rights cases. It will also impact the Labour Court’s industrial relations role as an independent tribunal that investigates disputes of an individual and collective nature and its role in the regulation of the conditions of employment of certain workers.

A significant number of cases which are part-heard will have to be re-heard in full afresh. The Labour Court is now commencing the process of identifying those cases.

The Labour Court will write to representative bodies and service users in the coming days to set out how users will be impacted in the immediate term.

The Labour Court sincerely regrets the disruption and delay that this unforeseen communication has caused.