The High Court has remitted a teacher’s unfair dismissal case to the Labour Court for reconsideration, finding it could not be satisfied that the Labour Court had applied the correct legal principles to a statutory exclusion in a fixed-term contract.
The case concerned Dawn-Marie Conaty and the Board of Management of Malahide Community School. Conaty worked at the school from August 2013 without a written contract. After an interview in October 2015, she signed a fixed-term whole-time temporary teacher contract covering 8 October 2015 to 31 August 2016.
She was unsuccessful in a further interview for the 2016–17 school year. The Labour Court later found that the exclusion clause in the fixed-term contract could not prevent the Unfair Dismissals Act from applying, and that Conaty had been unfairly dismissed when the contract was not renewed on 1 September 2016.
The school appealed to the High Court on a point of law. It argued that the fixed-term contract was effective, that the Labour Court had wrongly considered the parties’ earlier employment arrangement, and that it had misapplied principles concerning waiver of legal rights. Conaty opposed the appeal and sought to uphold the Labour Court’s decision.
The High Court said the Labour Court had relied on waiver decisions that did not address the statutory exclusion under section 2(2)(b) of the Unfair Dismissals Act. It held that those decisions, on their own and without further consideration of that section, were not capable of showing a correct application of the law. The judge also identified a need for the Labour Court to explain the distinction it had drawn between an exclusion and a waiver, and why waiver principles addressed the central issue.
The High Court did not decide whether the statutory exclusion applied or determine the unfair dismissal claim. It remitted the matter to the Labour Court for reconsideration.