Protection of Employment (Exceptional Collective Redundancies and Related Matters) Act 2007
This Act is designed to give greater protection to groups of workers faced by redundancy. In Ireland, collective redundancies arise where, during any period of thirty consecutive days, the employees being made redundant are:
- Five employees where 21–49 are employed
- Ten employees where 50–99 are employed
- Ten per cent of the employees where 100–299 are employed
Thirty employees where 300 or more are employed.
Under the Protection of Employment (Exceptional Collective Redundancies and Related Matters) Act 2007 some collective redundancies may be referred to a Redundancy Panel of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to determine whether redundancies were (or are being) carried out in order to replace the employees with workers on lower pay or other less favourable terms and conditions. These are known as exceptional collective redundancies. If the panel decides the redundancies were carried out for this reason, the employees concerned will be able to take action for unfair dismissal.
*A ruling of the European Court of Justice in Junk v Wolfgang Kühnel (Case C-188/03, January 2005) has established that this obligation commences when the employer tells workers of an intention to make some or all of them redundant, not once they have given notice to terminate the contracts.