The Legal 500

There has been substantial growth in employment disputes in the last 12 months, where service providers and outsourcing arrangements are being changed. These disputes arises where an incumbent service provider (be it security, logistics, canteen providers, IT specialists etc) loses a contract to provide services and one of its competitors replaces it to provide the same service or a similar service in the future. The query arises as to whether such a change of service provider gives rise to the need to transfer the employees who did the work, by applying the Transfer Regulations 2003.

Healthcare workers working in locum positions may now be deemed by Revenue to be employees rather than contractors for income tax purposes. Healthcare practices engaging locums are often brought in as self-employed/contractors, as opposed to employees, and so the practice was not liable to deduct PAYE. This arrangement allowed flexibility in the practice. The locum doctors generally received a payment each week/month and were then accountable for their own tax.

(1) Redundancy – What are my entitlements/obligations?  (2) Is the redundancy legitimate?  (3) What can I do if my employer is insolvent?

Employment Equality legislation in Ireland is to be found in the Employment Equality Act 1998 as amended by the Equality Act 2004. This legislation is extremely detailed but in effect makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate against a person on the basis of gender, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race, and membership of the traveller community. These are referred to as the “discriminatory grounds”.

In March of this year the Government, as part of its commitment in Towards 2016, introduced The Employment Law Compliance Bill 2008 (“the Bill”). The purpose of this article is to set out briefly the most important provisions of the Bill. It is possible that the Act which is ultimately passed may differ from the Bill but for the purposes of this article it is assumed that the Bill will be enacted in its entirety

The culture of corporate enforcement has become a very real issue for directors. In the last two years in particular there has been an increase in the number of directors who have found themselves in the High Court facing applications to restrict or disqualify them for various breaches of the Companies Acts or their general duties as directors. A restriction or disqualification order obviously has extremely serious implications for a director and any company they are involved in. This article looks at the two relevant sections of the Companies Acts and the approach taken by the Courts

The duties owed by Directors to their company are many and diverse. The overriding principle of Company Law is that a Director’s duties are owed in the first instance to the company and not to the individual shareholders or employees. These duties are derived from various sources including common law, case law, legislation and the articles of association of the company concerned. A brief summary is set out below.

An issue which frequently arises for companies is what do if an employee goes to a competitor or decides to set up on their own in competition to their previous employer. This is particularly serious if the employee concerned is a senior person with influence over customers or fellow employees. In some cases the loss of a key employee to a competitor can result in significant damage to the business. In the financial services sector this can be a real problem due to the fact that many valuable relationships are to some extent personal between the client and the employee when a rapport and reliance on advice has built up over a considerable period. It would not be unusual for a client to deal exclusively with a particular individual within a company. Recent years have seen whole teams leave one company and go to work for the competition. As well as the obvious loss of this resource, the company may suffer from a failure of confidence amongst clients who may perceive that there may be a fundamental problem in the company to result in a mass walk out. The bigger the numbers leaving or the more influential the personnel involved, the more likely there is to be publicity whether in the general media or in more specialised publications.

In March of this year the Government introduced The Employment Law Compliance Bill 2008 (“the Bill”). The purpose of this article is to set out briefly the most important provisions of the Bill. It is possible that the Act which is ultimately passed may differ from the Bill but for the purposes of this article it is assumed that the Bill will be enacted in its entirety.

The Equality Act 2004 ("the 2004 Act") came into force on 19 July 2004 and introduced a number of important changes to discrimination law in Ireland.