About Mary Molloy Solicitors

Dismissal Law Where It Meets Real Life

Most Irish employment law online is written for HR departments: policy updates, compliance checklists, employer briefings on the latest Labour Court decision. That is not the employment law most people meet. Ours is the person sacked on a Friday afternoon with no hearing and no warning; the person on a performance plan that was never designed to be passed; the person on sick leave whose employer stopped waiting; the person eleven months in who was told the Acts do not apply to them; and the person told to retire at 65 who wants to work on. It is also the small employer who did the wrong thing in the right spirit, and now has a WRC complaint form on the desk. Those clients need the same Unfair Dismissals Acts the big cases use — explained plainly, with the documents and the deadlines first.

The practice is led by Richard O’Shea, a solicitor whose employment work runs through exactly these disputes — and who holds a Diploma in Mediation from the Law Society of Ireland. In this field the credential is structural, not decorative: the WRC offers mediation that is free, voluntary and confidential, 1,034 mediations ran in 2025 and 54% of them resolved, and most dismissal claims settle before the adjudicator ever hears evidence. A mediator’s training changes how the file is run: toward the settlement that reflects the real strength of the case, with the hearing prepared in full so that the settlement is honest.

How We Run a Dismissal Claim

Documents first: the contract, the handbook or disciplinary policy, the dismissal letter or the resignation, the grievance and disciplinary correspondence, the payslips — because dismissal claims are decided on paper, and the paper usually already exists. Honest arithmetic second: what the claim or defence is realistically worth under the section 7 formula, what it costs to run, and whether a well-aimed letter, a WRC mediation or a full hearing gets you there. And the clock always: six months from the date of dismissal to lodge the complaint, 42 days to appeal to the Labour Court, 21 days for interim relief after a protected disclosure dismissal. The first consultation always establishes which clocks are running on you.

We act mainly for employees who have been dismissed or forced out, and we defend claims for employers. We never act for both sides of the same dispute. Where a dismissal is really a redundancy, or where the real question is whether to sign a settlement agreement, those are the specialisms of our sister sites at redundancysolicitors.ie and settlementagreementsolicitor.ie, and we will say so.

Our Offices

Dublin: The Ormond Building, 31-36 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7 (D07 EE37). Kilkenny: 2 Rose Inn Street (R95 W58D). Dismissal claims run on documents, phone, Zoom and email, so we act nationwide. Call 01 5827148 or see the contact page. Our consultation fee and the way work after it is quoted are set out on the fees page.

Talk Through Your Dismissal

One consultation: your position on the documents, the realistic routes, and the clocks running on you.