The High Court quashed two Employment Appeals Tribunal decisions on redundancy claims brought by former Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology lecturers Helena Pidgeon and Helen Thornton, finding that the tribunal had relied on a statutory basis the parties had not addressed and had decided an issue without hearing evidence that could be relevant.
Mr Justice Charleton delivered judgment on 20 June 2007 in the institute’s judicial review application. He did not decide what redundancy payments the women were entitled to, whether their working arrangements were objectively justified, or whether the tribunal had jurisdiction to decide a claim under the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001.
Pidgeon and Thornton, who had worked part-time as German studies lecturers, were made redundant on 31 August 2003. Their weekly hours had varied with student demand: they each worked 11 hours a week in the 2001–02 academic year, falling later to five hours and then to no German teaching hours. They claimed under the Redundancy Payments Acts, arguing that a payment based on five hours did not reflect their earnings and service. The judgment says the underlying payment dispute was settled to the parties’ satisfaction before the judicial review.
The tribunal decided the claims on written legal submissions. Although both sides had initially agreed to that approach, the institute later requested an oral hearing, arguing that evidence was needed to establish the nature of the lecturers’ employment and their normal weekly remuneration. The tribunal refused that request and issued its decisions on 20 April 2005.
It relied on the Part-Time Work Act, concluding that a contract term allowing the lecturers’ hours and pay to fall was void because comparable full-time workers did not have a similar term. The High Court noted that the Act allows differences in treatment to be justified on objective grounds, an issue that may require evidence or explanations from both sides. No one had raised that Act in the tribunal submissions, and the parties had not been put on notice that it would determine the claims.
The judge said a tribunal must give parties a fair opportunity to address the facts, remedies and law relevant to a decision. He did not rule on whether the Part-Time Work Act claim belonged before the tribunal or another body, saying that issue was not before him. He concluded that the tribunal had erred both by relying on an unraised statutory remedy and by failing to hear evidence on objective justification.
The court quashed the tribunal’s 20 April 2005 decisions in Pidgeon’s and Thornton’s proceedings. It made no further order because the institute and the former lecturers had separately settled the redundancy payment issue.