The High Court has quashed a decision disallowing a woman’s appeal over a refusal of maternity benefit, finding that the appeals officer applied the wrong legal approach to her employment without a work permit.
The judgment by Mr Justice Heslin concerns a decision dated 5 March 2020. The appeals officer had concluded that the claimant’s employment was not legally valid because she lacked a valid immigration card or work permit while working in Ireland, and that the associated PRSI contributions could not count towards maternity benefit eligibility.
The claimant, a Mauritian citizen, began maternity leave on 15 December 2018 and gave birth on 9 January 2019. She applied for maternity benefit in April 2019. The judgment records that she had paid PRSI contributions and that the ordinary contribution, medical certification and maternity leave requirements were not disputed. The dispute concerned whether her employment qualified as insurable employment.
The claimant argued that the appeals officer had treated the employment contract as automatically void because it contravened work permit legislation. She relied on the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Quinn v IBRC, which set out a contextual approach to deciding whether illegality makes a contract void or unenforceable. The respondents maintained that the 1995 Supreme Court decision in FAS v Abbott governed the matter and supported refusing to count the contributions.
Mr Justice Heslin held that the 2005 Social Welfare Consolidation Act and the relevant immigration and employment permit legislation did not expressly say that employment without a permit could not be treated as a contract of service for social welfare purposes, or that contributions made in those circumstances were not reckonable. Where legislation is silent, he said, the Quinn approach requires consideration of competing principles and relevant statutory factors; illegality does not automatically make a contract void for every purpose.
The court found that the appeals officer had relied exclusively on FAS and had not applied the Quinn approach. That was an error of law. The court did not substitute its own decision on the benefit claim or rule that the claimant’s contributions qualify. It quashed the 5 March 2020 decision and said the matter must be reconsidered using the approach in Quinn.
The judgment did not address the claimant’s constitutional or European Convention arguments. The parties were directed to correspond on the precise form of the order and costs, with any unresolved submissions to be filed within 28 days.