Wicklow runs on two workforces. The first commutes: Bray, Greystones and the towns along the N11 and M11 send a large share of their working population into Dublin each morning by DART, train and road. The second stays: tourism and hospitality from the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough to the hotels and restaurants of the coast, with the manufacturing and retail employment of Wicklow town and Arklow. An unfair dismissal solicitor in Wicklow serves both, and for both the forum is the same: the Workplace Relations Commission, which hears most of its cases at Lansdowne House in Ballsbridge or remotely, applying the Unfair Dismissals Acts 1977-2015. Our Dublin office at Ormond Quay Upper serves Wicklow clients.
Unfair Dismissal Claims in Wicklow
The commuter cases look like Dublin cases, because they are: a documented performance process, a handbook, and a question of whether the procedure matched the Code of Practice on Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures (S.I. 146/2000) and the sanction was proportionate. The tourism and hospitality cases are a different kind of law. Seasonal employment means short service, so the first question is whether the employee has the year of continuous service that section 2(1)(a) requires or falls within a section 6(2A) exception for pregnancy, family leave, union activity, a protected disclosure or minimum wage rights. Fixed-term and seasonal contracts raise the rule in the European Union (Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions) Regulations 2022 that no new probation can be imposed when a fixed-term contract is renewed, which catches employers who put returning summer staff back on probation each spring. Hospitality dismissals are also delivered fast, often at the end of a shift and for conduct, with no written allegation, hearing or appeal, so the case is about the presumption of unfairness in section 6(1) and the written reasons due within 14 days of a request under section 14(4). Even inside the first year, statutory notice is owed after 13 weeks, and the Labour Court section 20 route and the Employment Equality Acts may remain open.
Wicklow complaints go in through the WRC eComplaint portal, and the hearing, if there is one, is most often listed at Lansdowne House in Ballsbridge, beside Lansdowne Road DART station on the line from Bray and Greystones, or held remotely, which the WRC offers unless the interests of justice require otherwise; the WRC also sits regionally. Hearings are in public, the parties are named in the published decision unless special circumstances exist, and the WRC does not award costs, so each side pays its own. Mediation comes first, free, voluntary and confidential, and most claims settle there, which is where the mediation credential earns its place: for a seasonal worker, or an employer with a hotel to run, a mediated settlement is usually quicker than a hearing. Either side may appeal to the Labour Court, also in Dublin, within 42 days. The six-month limit under section 8(2) runs from the date of dismissal as section 1 defines it, extendable to twelve months only for reasonable cause, so the first consultation fixes the date you were told and the notice given.
The Dublin office at The Ormond Building, 31-36 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7, is a walk along the quays from Tara Street and Connolly, where the DART and the trains from Bray, Greystones, Wicklow town and Arklow arrive, and most Wicklow clients who meet us in person do so on a working day in the city. The work itself runs on documents: the contract, the handbook, the dismissal letter, the disciplinary correspondence and the payslips, exchanged by email with calls and Zoom in between, so a client in Baltinglass is served exactly as one in Bray. Wicklow employers defending a claim, from a hotel or restaurant to a manufacturing site in Arklow, get the same analysis from the other side: whether the stated reason is one of the fair grounds in section 6(4), whether the record shows a procedure that matched S.I. 146/2000, and whether free WRC mediation or an early settlement makes more commercial sense than a public hearing. We never act for both sides of the same dispute.
How We Work With Wicklow Clients
Dismissal claims run on documents, phone, Zoom and email — the contract, the dismissal letter, the disciplinary correspondence, the payslips — so distance costs nothing: we act for clients in every county from our Dublin and Kilkenny offices, and WRC hearings themselves are increasingly held remotely. The first consultation is the same wherever you are: your position on the documents, the realistic routes, and the six-month clock running on you. Start with the Dismissal Claim Route Finder, and check your own deadline on the WRC Deadline Calculator.
Mary Molloy Solicitors advise on employment law. Nothing on this page is advice on tax or on social welfare entitlements — take that advice separately. WRC procedure and time limits are strictly applied, and a late complaint is usually a lost complaint. Take advice before resigning, before signing anything, and before any deadline passes.
Dismissed or Forced Out in Wicklow?
One consultation establishes the legal position, the documents that decide it, the realistic routes and the deadlines - wherever in Ireland you worked.
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