The High Court has set aside a Labour Court determination in an unfair dismissal case and remitted the worker’s appeal for a fresh hearing. The court found errors in the Labour Court’s treatment of a protected disclosure argument and its assessment of employment status.
The case concerns Padraic Hanley’s appeal against a 2023 Labour Court decision involving PBR Restaurants Ltd, trading as Fish Shack Café. Mr Justice Bolger delivered the High Court judgment on 19 November 2024.
Hanley lodged an unfair dismissal complaint with the Workplace Relations Commission in October 2020. He described the dismissal as a “sham redundancy” following a breakdown in his relationship with management. The WRC adjudication officer found that he had not been an employee from August 2008 to December 2019 and therefore lacked the 12 months’ service generally required to bring an unfair dismissal claim.
At the Labour Court hearing, Hanley’s representative raised for the first time that the dismissal was alleged to have been wholly or partly because of protected disclosures. The Labour Court declined to hear that argument, treating it as a new claim outside its appellate jurisdiction. It then found Hanley was not an employee before December 2019, relying largely on a mutuality of obligation analysis.
The High Court held that the Labour Court’s statutory appeal was a de novo hearing and that it had to give the parties an opportunity to present relevant evidence. Hanley’s claim remained one under the Unfair Dismissals Act, the court said; relying on alleged protected disclosures as a ground for unfair dismissal did not turn it into a separate claim under the Protected Disclosures Act. The High Court found the Labour Court erred in refusing to hear that evidence and in treating the protected disclosure issue as outside its jurisdiction.
The court also held that the Labour Court’s employment status analysis was legally flawed in light of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Revenue Commissioners v Karshan. That decision set out a five-question approach to determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. The High Court concluded that the Labour Court had relied too heavily on mutuality of obligation as a defining requirement.
The High Court did not decide whether Hanley was an employee, whether he made protected disclosures, or whether his dismissal was unfair. It set aside the Labour Court determination and returned the appeal to that court for a rehearing. The Labour Court will have to consider the appeal afresh, including the evidence and arguments the High Court said it had wrongly excluded.