Dismissed While Pregnant or on Maternity Leave

An employee dismissed while pregnant in Ireland, or while on maternity or other family leave, is in the one group the Unfair Dismissals Acts 1977-2015 protect from the first day of employment. Section 6(2) deems a dismissal unfair where it results wholly or mainly from pregnancy, giving birth, breastfeeding or related matters, or from availing of family leave; section 6(2A) removes the one-year service requirement for those cases; and the Employment Equality Acts 1998-2015 treat the same dismissal as discrimination on the gender ground, with no service requirement either. The employer’s only answer is that the real reason was something else, which means the whole case turns on timing: what the employer knew, when it knew it, and what changed afterwards.

1. Dismissed While Pregnant: Why Section 6(2A) Changes the Case

For most employees, two rules keep the first year of a job outside the Unfair Dismissals Acts: section 2(1)(a), which requires one year’s continuous service, and section 3, which excludes a dismissal during a written probation or training period of one year or less. Section 6(2A) switches both rules off where the dismissal results from pregnancy, giving birth, breastfeeding or related matters, or from availing of maternity, adoptive, paternity, parental, carer’s, parent’s or force majeure leave. The employee let go a fortnight after telling her manager she was pregnant, three weeks into probation, has exactly the same claim as a colleague with a decade of service. Fathers and other carers are inside the subsection too: a dismissal that results from taking paternity, parental, parent’s, carer’s or force majeure leave is treated in the same way. The full list of grounds that waive the service rule, and the ones that do not, is in our guide to automatically unfair dismissals in Ireland.

2. Section 6(2): Dismissal for Pregnancy or Family Leave Is Deemed Unfair

Section 6(1) already deems every dismissal unfair unless the employer shows substantial grounds justifying it, and the grounds available to it are the four in section 6(4): capability, competence or qualifications; conduct; redundancy; and contravention of statute. Section 6(2) then lists reasons that can never be substantial grounds, and among them are pregnancy, attendance at ante-natal classes, giving birth, breastfeeding or related matters, and availing of rights to maternity, adoptive, paternity, parental, force majeure, carer’s or parent’s leave. A dismissal that results wholly or mainly from any of those is deemed unfair without more. The practical consequence is that the employer’s case is always that the dismissal was for a section 6(4) ground and that the pregnancy or the leave was a coincidence, and it then has to prove that ground in the ordinary way, with a process that matches the Code of Practice on Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures (S.I. 146/2000). The first letter after any dismissal is the request for a written statement of the reasons under section 14(4), due within 14 days. In these cases it does double duty: it fixes the employer to one reason, and it gives you the document the timing is measured against.

3. Protective Leave: The Maternity Protection Act 1994

Maternity leave itself has a further layer of protection. A purported dismissal during protective leave is void under the Maternity Protection Act 1994. That is why the dismissal in these cases rarely arrives during the leave. It arrives before it, as a probation review brought forward or a performance concern raised for the first time after the pregnancy is disclosed, or after it, as a restructuring announced while you were away, a replacement who has been kept on, a role “absorbed” by the time you return, or a refused request to come back on different hours followed by a performance process. Each of those is examined under section 6(2) and 6(2A) in the same way: did the dismissal result wholly or mainly from the pregnancy or the leave, and can the employer prove otherwise. Our practice page on being dismissed while pregnant or on family leave sets out how the WRC approaches each version.

4. The Employment Equality Acts Gender Ground in Parallel

The same dismissal is also a discriminatory dismissal under the Employment Equality Acts 1998-2015, which treat less favourable treatment of a woman on a ground related to her pregnancy or maternity leave as discrimination on the gender ground, one of the nine grounds, and which have no service requirement at all. The two complaints are made to the WRC on the same complaint form and are usually lodged together. They are not the same claim. Compensation under the Unfair Dismissals Acts is for financial loss attributable to the dismissal, with nothing for stress or injury to feelings, while the equality route is measured on a different basis, and the same dismissal is not compensated twice. Which route carries the case, and whether both are run to the hearing, is a decision taken on the documents with advice rather than on the day.

5. Evidence of Timing: The Chronology That Decides the Case

Because the employer’s defence is always that it was something else, the case is won or lost on a chronology, and the chronology is built from documents that already exist:

• The disclosure: the date you told the employer you were pregnant or applied for leave, in what form and to whom — the email, the message, the HR form, the medical certificate;
• The record before it: appraisals, probation reviews, bonus letters and the absence of any warning, which form the baseline the employer’s later reason is measured against;
• The first adverse step after it: the performance concern raised for the first time, the shift change, the probation review brought forward, the restructuring memo, and the gap in days between the disclosure and that step;
• The leave correspondence: the application, the employer’s reply, any discussion of cover, and the return-to-work exchange;
• The replacement: who covered the role, whether they were kept on, and on what terms;
• The written reasons: the section 14(4) statement, compared line by line with everything above.

Keep everything in writing from the day the pregnancy is disclosed, keep copies off the employer’s systems, and note every conversation on the day it happens. The employer carries the burden under section 6(1); your chronology is what prevents it discharging that burden.

6. Redundancy During Maternity Leave

Redundancy is a fair ground under section 6(4), and employers who would never write “pregnancy” in a dismissal letter will write “restructuring”. Two provisions answer that. First, a redundancy must be genuine: the job, not the person, has to be going, and where the work is still there and someone else is doing it, the section 6(2A) question is whether the dismissal in fact resulted from availing of the leave. Second, section 6(3) deems a redundancy dismissal unfair where the selection for redundancy breached an agreed procedure or custom without special reason, or resulted wholly or mainly from a section 6(2) ground, and availing of maternity leave is one of those grounds. A redundancy that selects the one employee who was out of the building is examined against both, and the questions are when the restructuring was first mentioned, who else was in the pool, and what happened to the work.

7. Short Service, Probation and the Routes That Fit

Where the dismissal results from the pregnancy or the leave, short service is no obstacle, for the reasons in section 1. Where the employer can show it did not, the ordinary rules return, and an employee with under a year’s service is back to the routes explained in our guide to being dismissed with less than 12 months’ service: the equality route, a referral to the Labour Court under section 20(1) of the Industrial Relations Act 1969 for a non-binding recommendation, and a wrongful dismissal claim for unpaid notice. Separately, the European Union (Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions) Regulations 2022 cap probation at six months, or twelve in exceptional circumstances, so a probation quietly extended past the pregnancy disclosure raises its own question. The Dismissal Claim Route Finder shows how the routes line up for your service and timing.

8. Deadlines, Redress and First Steps

A WRC complaint must be lodged within six months of the date of dismissal, extendable to twelve months only where reasonable cause prevented an earlier complaint (section 8(2)). The date of dismissal is the date notice expired or, where no proper notice was given, the date proper contractual or statutory notice would have expired (section 1). A new baby is not reasonable cause for lateness, so file early. Redress under section 7 is reinstatement, re-engagement or compensation for financial loss attributable to the dismissal, up to 104 weeks’ remuneration, or up to four weeks’ remuneration where there is no financial loss, and the employee must mitigate by seeking work. This week: send the section 14(4) request, gather the contract, handbook, leave correspondence and dismissal letter, write the timeline while the dates are fresh, and do not sign any exit document without advice, because a settlement agreement usually waives both routes. Employers defending a dismissal that followed a pregnancy disclosure get the same analysis from the other side. We act mainly for employees and also defend claims for employers, never both sides of the same dispute.