The High Court has granted an interlocutory injunction restraining Athlone Institute of Technology from dismissing lecturer David Holland pending the trial of his action. Mr Justice Hogan said the order rested on a substantial issue about whether an education department circular created a legitimate expectation of job security; he did not decide the claim’s ultimate merits.
Holland had worked as a bricklaying lecturer in the institute’s Department of Trades since January 2005. After two fixed-term contracts, he began a further contract in January 2008. Its terms said it would continue while apprentice courses in brickwork continued. The institute decided to discontinue those courses and notified him in January 2011 that it intended to make him redundant from June that year.
An interim injunction had first been granted by Ms Justice Irvine on the proposed termination date and was continued until Hogan’s decision. Meanwhile, the Labour Court had ruled that Holland’s 2008 contract was for indefinite duration, either by its terms or because there were no objective grounds for renewing it as a fixed-term contract. The institute appealed that decision. Hogan assumed for the injunction application that the Labour Court’s ruling was correct and would ultimately govern Holland’s case.
Hogan rejected the argument that the Public Service Agreement 2010/2014, known as the Croke Park Agreement, gave Holland an enforceable legal right against redundancy. He said its commitment against compulsory redundancies was political and industrial-relations in nature, and too conditional and imprecise to create a legitimate expectation that no public-sector employee would face redundancy.
The judge also found no evidence that departmental circulars had been incorporated into Holland’s contract, so they gave him no contractual rights. But he said Circular 93/2007 appeared sufficiently precise and unconditional to raise a substantial issue about whether it created a legitimate expectation that lecturers with contracts of indefinite duration would have enhanced job security. He did not determine whether the circular applied to Holland, had been overtaken by events, or could properly apply to the institute.
The court concluded that Holland had a strong case likely to succeed at trial on that legitimate-expectation issue alone. Hogan stressed that this did not mean Holland would ultimately win. He granted the injunction pending trial and said he would give directions if needed to bring the case on in very early course. The judgment did not decide any potential remedy under the Unfair Dismissals Acts.