The Supreme Court held that the procedures used by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) to decide employment disputes involved the administration of justice and were contrary to Article 34 of the Constitution. The conclusion appears in a judgment by Justice John MacMenamin dated 6 April 2021. The supplied source contains his judgment, but not the Court’s final order or the other judges’ judgments.
The appeal arose from Tomasz Zalewski’s challenge to the process for deciding his unfair dismissal and wages complaints. Zalewski said he had been summarily dismissed from a Dublin shop and considered the dismissal unfair. His solicitor had asked to cross-examine the employer’s witnesses because evidence was expected to conflict.
No evidence was heard at a brief hearing on 26 October 2016, which was adjourned to 13 December. When Zalewski and his solicitor attended on the new date, an adjudication officer told them that a decision had already been issued and that the hearing date had been assigned in error. The written decision described a hearing and evidence that had not taken place and stated that Zalewski had failed to provide documentation. The judgment says that account was incorrect. Affidavits from the WRC described the decision as an administrative error, but MacMenamin J. said the explanations did not fit together and the WRC had not explained what happened.
The legal question in the appeal was whether the WRC’s adjudication functions crossed the constitutional boundary reserved for courts. MacMenamin J. concluded that the five criteria from McDonald v. Bord na gCon were satisfied. He disagreed with the High Court judge’s conclusion on the fourth criterion, enforcement: under the statutory scheme, an uncomplied-with decision could lead to a District Court order, followed by possible prosecution for non-compliance. He also agreed with the High Court that employment disputes and the orders made in them had historically been matters for the courts.
He concluded that the WRC procedures amounted to the administration of justice contrary to Article 34. He also criticised the enforcement process under section 43 of the Workplace Relations Act 2015, saying its restrictions on hearing the employer and evidence meant it did not provide the fair procedures of a court. In his view, the proceedings required the protections associated with Re Haughey, including an opportunity to test conflicting evidence.
This is MacMenamin J.’s reasoning and proposed conclusion, not a complete account of the Supreme Court’s disposition. The extract ends with his view that the procedures should be declared repugnant to the Constitution; it does not state the final order made by the Court.