Dismissed While Pregnant or on Family Leave

Dismissed While Pregnant in Ireland: Section 6(2A) and the One-Year Rule

Section 2(1)(a) of the Acts requires one year’s continuous service before an employee can bring an unfair dismissal claim, and section 3 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 same subsection covers trade union membership or activity, a protected disclosure and exercising rights under the National Minimum Wage Act, and the full list is explained in our guide to automatically unfair dismissals. 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 ten years’ service. Fathers are inside the subsection too: a dismissal that results from taking paternity, parental or parent’s leave is treated in the same way.

Pregnancy Dismissal Is Deemed Unfair: What the Employer Must Prove

Section 6(1) already deems every dismissal unfair unless the employer shows substantial grounds justifying it, and the grounds available are the four in section 6(4): capability, competence or qualifications; conduct; redundancy; and contravention of statute. A pregnancy dismissal is never one of those, so 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. It then has to prove that ground in the ordinary way, with a procedure that matches the Code of Practice on Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures (S.I. 146/2000): the issue put in writing, an investigation, a hearing with representation, a proportionate decision and an appeal. 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 against which the timing is measured.

Maternity Leave Dismissal, the Restructured Role and Being Dismissed After Maternity Leave

The dismissal rarely arrives during the leave itself. It arrives as a restructuring announced while you are away, a replacement who is kept on, a role “absorbed” by the time you return, a refused request to come back on different hours followed by a performance process, or a redundancy that selects the one employee who was out of the building. Redundancy is a fair ground, but it 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 resulted from availing of the leave. Genuine redundancy is covered in depth by our sister site at redundancysolicitors.ie; the dismissal dressed as redundancy belongs here. The same analysis applies to the employee dismissed after maternity leave for “performance” when the file before the leave was clean, and to breastfeeding on return, which section 6(2A) names expressly.

The Equality Route in Parallel

A pregnancy or maternity 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, 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, not on the day. The Dismissal Claim Route Finder shows how the routes line up for your service and timing.

Evidence of Timing: The Documents That Decide These Cases

Because the employer’s defence is always “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, the absence of any warning — 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); the employee’s chronology is what stops it discharging it.

Probation, Short Service and the Dismissal Dressed as Something Else

Employers who would never write “pregnancy” in a dismissal letter will write “did not pass probation” or “not the right fit”, because they believe the first year is a free zone. For most employees it is, and our page on dismissal during probation or with under 12 months’ service explains the Labour Court section 20 route and the equality route that remain. For the pregnant employee and the employee on family leave it is not: section 6(2A) overrides both the one-year rule and the section 3 probation exclusion, and the European Union (Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions) Regulations 2022 separately cap probation at six months, or twelve in exceptional circumstances, with no new probation on the renewal of a fixed-term contract. A probation dismissal that follows a pregnancy disclosure is therefore examined in exactly the same way as any other: the real reason, the timing, and the procedure. The guide to being dismissed while pregnant or on maternity leave walks through the common versions step by step.

Deadlines, Redress and First Steps

The 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 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 and proving it. The WRC offers free, voluntary and confidential mediation first. 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.

Dismissed While Pregnant or on Leave? The Timing Is the Case

Bring the dates: when you told them, when the leave started, when the first problem appeared. One consultation establishes which routes are open, what the employer must prove, and the date you must file by.

Related Reading

• Dismissed While Pregnant or on Maternity Leave
• Automatically Unfair Dismissals in Ireland
• Dismissed During Probation or With Under 12 Months’ Service
• Dismissal Claim Route Finder (Free Tool)