Employment Rights
Published on: 11 June 2019
Published on: 11 June 2019
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has responsibility for employment rights policy and legislation since October 2020, when the function transferred from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, now renamed as the Department of Social Protection.
This Unit transferred to the newly named Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in October 2020.
The role of the Unit is to:
The Unit has lead responsibility on Employment Rights - Policy and Legislation. This covers responsibility for 10 separate primary Acts governing employment rights in Ireland.
The Unit seeks to ensure that the suite of employment rights provides adequate protections for employees while taking into account the core business needs of employers. It also serves to encourage compliance among employers.
The Unit however is not responsible for responding to specific queries from the general public relating to employment rights issues or the enforcement of an individual’s employment rights.
Instead this function rests with the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), who is responsible for the dissemination of information in regard to employment rights and ensuring compliance with and enforcement, where necessary, of employment rights. The WRC comes under the remit of this department.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) is an independent, statutory body which was established on 1 October 2015 under the Workplace Relations Act 2015 (No. 16 of 2015). The WRC provides information on industrial relations and rights and obligations under Irish employment and equality legislation.
One of the key objectives of the WRC is to provide impartial information on a wide variety of employment rights legislation to employers and employees by telephone, in writing, through its website and through ongoing public awareness programmes. In addition, the WRC is responsible for monitoring a range of employment rights through its Inspection Service.
Where an employee considers that their rights have been breached, the individual can bring a claim under the appropriate legislation to the WRC.
The WRC Service Section can be contacted at Lo-call: 1890 80 80 90 or via its website - at www.workplacerelations.ie.
Complaints in relation to alleged contraventions of employment and equality legislation may be presented to the WRC via the Commission’s e-Complaint Facility, which can be accessed at www.workplacerelations.ie. Depending on the nature of the complaint, the matter will be referred for either investigation or adjudication.
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