The High Court dismissed the Board of Management of Malahide Community School’s appeal against a Labour Court determination in favour of teacher Dawn Marie Conaty. It affirmed the Labour Court’s 29 June 2018 determination, which found that her dismissal was unfair and directed the school to re-engage her from the start of the 2018/2019 school year.
The appeal concerned whether a contract signed by Conaty in October 2015 could make her employment fixed term and remove unfair dismissal rights she had already acquired. The school argued that the contract met the statutory conditions for excluding a dismissal caused only by the expiry of a fixed-term contract. It also argued that section 13 of the Unfair Dismissals Act, which makes certain provisions limiting the Act void, did not apply to that exclusion.
The judgment records that Conaty had more than one year of continuous service at the school and that the school had conceded she had acquired rights under the Act. The Labour Court’s findings, which the High Court accepted as the basis for the appeal, were that her earlier employment was permanent and that she was not told the October 2015 contract would cost her those rights. The school’s principal had mistakenly believed that Conaty’s employment in the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 school years had been under fixed-term contracts; the judgment says there was no written contract for either year.
Justice Garrett Simons held that section 13 protected rights already acquired. The October 2015 contract purported to change Conaty’s status from permanent to fixed term, depriving her of those protections, so its relevant provisions were void. The judge also considered whether an employee could waive statutory rights through informed consent, but said that even if such a waiver were possible here, Conaty had not been informed of the loss of her rights.
The court separately concluded that the contract did not meet section 2(2)(b)’s fixed-term exception. It allowed for renewal depending on whether teaching hours and demand for English and Religion continued, so its end date was not sufficiently certain. It was signed after the stated commencement date, and the employment had already been permanent. The court also found that the contract did not clearly tell Conaty she was giving up her existing statutory protection.
The judgment dismissed the appeal and affirmed the Labour Court determination. It did not make a new re-engagement order; the affirmed determination directed re-engagement from the 2018/2019 school year.