The High Court has refused an application by six former Mental Health Tribunal clerks for an interlocutory injunction against the Mental Health Commission. The clerks argued that they were employees entitled to contracts of indefinite duration, but the court said they had not shown a strong case that their contracts remained in force after 30 April 2012.
The applicants were members of a panel of clerks whose work supported Mental Health Tribunals reviewing involuntary patient admissions. Their contracts described them as service providers rather than employees. The Commission did not renew any of the 25 clerks’ contracts when they expired on 30 April 2012, citing pressure on public finances and reduced administrative support needs. It said tribunal members would carry out the former clerks’ administrative duties and that no one would be given their work.
The six applicants disputed their status as independent contractors. They relied, among other things, on the way they performed their work and on tax records describing them as employees. They also claimed that, if they were employees, successive contracts had become contracts of indefinite duration under the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003. Their applications to the Rights Commissioner were pending.
The court’s decision concerned interim relief, not the final determination of those claims. The judge said the applications required the clerks to meet the strong-case threshold for a mandatory interlocutory injunction. Even assuming for the purpose of the application that they were employees and that they had contracts of indefinite duration, the judge concluded that they had not shown a strong case that their contracts failed to terminate on 30 April 2012.
The judge did not decide whether the clerks were employees or independent contractors, saying that issue was for the Rights Commissioner in the first instance. If the clerks succeed there, remedies under the 2003 Act may include reinstatement or re-engagement. The High Court said it had no role in awarding or enforcing those statutory remedies. It also rejected the suggestion that a clause submitting the parties to the Irish courts gave the High Court power to grant a remedy reserved by statute to the employment-law process.
The injunction application was refused. The judge expressed hope that the Rights Commissioner would hear the clerks’ claims promptly and noted that the Commission’s solicitors had agreed to expedite the matter.