Labour Court rejects Lorna Barnes’s appeal over employee status

The Labour Court disallowed Lorna Barnes’s appeal against the finding that she could not bring a complaint against the National Museum of Ireland under the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003. The determination was signed on 20 August 2018. The Court found that an earlier Rights Commissioner decision had already decided Barnes was not an employee under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997. It said the employee definitions in the two Acts were identical, so that finding bound her in the later proceedings. Barnes had appealed the earlier decision but withdrew that appeal. The Labour Court said she could not reopen the employee-status question through a complaint under the 2003 Act. It found that she lacked standing and said the complaint was not well founded.