Wrongful dismissal in Ireland is the claim most employees overlook because it sounds like the one they already have. It is not. Unfair dismissal asks whether the employer had a fair reason and followed a fair procedure. Wrongful dismissal asks a narrower question with a more certain answer: were you given the notice your contract and the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts 1973-2005 require, or paid in lieu of it? If not, the employer is in breach of contract, and that breach also moves the date of dismissal from which every WRC deadline is counted.
Law as at 4 October 2026: The Employment Law Review Group is reviewing the Unfair Dismissals Acts and the minimum notice periods in its 2025-26 programme. No Bill has been published, and the notice periods and rules described on this page are the law as it stands. Confirm the current position before acting on it.
Wrongful Dismissal in Ireland Versus Unfair Dismissal
The two claims come from different sources and are measured differently. Unfair dismissal is a creature of statute: under the Unfair Dismissals Acts 1977-2015 a dismissal is deemed unfair unless the employer shows substantial grounds justifying it, generally after a year’s service, with compensation measured by financial loss under section 7. Wrongful dismissal is a creature of contract. Every contract of employment can be ended on notice, and the length of that notice is fixed by the contract or, where the contract is silent or gives less, by the statutory minimum. End the contract without that notice and without pay in lieu, and the employer has broken it, whatever the reason for the dismissal. The claim lies at the WRC under the Minimum Notice Acts or in the civil courts, needs no year of service, and does not depend on the fairness of anything. That is why it matters most to the employee the Unfair Dismissals Acts do not reach: the person dismissed inside the first year, outside the section 6(2A) exceptions, whose options are set out on our probation and short-service page. For everyone else, the two claims run side by side, on the same complaint form, and the unfair dismissal claim is usually the larger of the two.
Minimum Notice Ireland: The Statutory Periods
Section 4 of the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973 entitles an employee with 13 weeks’ continuous service to a minimum period of notice that rises with length of service:
- 13 weeks to 2 years: 1 week;
- 2 to 5 years: 2 weeks;
- 5 to 10 years: 4 weeks;
- 10 to 15 years: 6 weeks;
- 15 years or more: 8 weeks.
Those are floors, not ceilings. A contract can give more and often does, particularly for senior and professional roles, and where it does the contractual period governs. A contract cannot give less: a clause providing one week’s notice to an employee with twelve years’ service is overridden by the six weeks the statute requires. Service is counted to the day the employment ends, so an employee a week short of the two-year mark is owed one week, and an employee a week past it is owed two. The one group outside the Acts is the employee with under 13 weeks’ service, for whom notice is a matter of contract alone.
Contractual Notice and Pay in Lieu of Notice
Pay in lieu of notice is permitted. The employer may end the employment immediately and pay what the employee would have earned over the notice period instead of requiring it to be worked, and most contracts reserve that choice to the employer expressly. Three points follow. The payment is measured by the contractual notice where that is longer than the statutory minimum, not by the statute alone. Pay in lieu discharges the notice obligation and nothing else: accepting it does not settle an unfair dismissal claim, which takes a signed settlement agreement, and our sister site at settlementagreementsolicitor.ie reviews those. And where the contract provides for benefits during notice, the question of whether they are included in the payment in lieu is a contract question, decided by the wording of the clause. An employer that pays statutory notice to an employee whose contract promised three months has paid some of what is owed, and the balance is a breach of contract claim.
Dismissed Without Notice: The Summary Dismissal Exception
There is one situation in which no notice and no pay in lieu is owed. Section 8 of the 1973 Act provides that nothing in the Act affects the right of an employer or employee to terminate the contract without notice because of the misconduct of the other party. That is the legal basis of summary dismissal for gross misconduct, and it is narrower than employers tend to assume. The employer must prove misconduct serious enough to justify ending the contract on the spot; a poor attitude, a missed target or a first lateness does not reach it. And for an employee with a year’s service, forfeiting notice does not dispense with the Unfair Dismissals Acts. The dismissal itself must still be for a fair ground under section 6(4), reached through the investigation, hearing, representation and appeal that the Code of Practice on Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures (S.I. 146/2000) requires, and the sanction must be proportionate. Where the misconduct is not made out, two consequences follow at once: the notice is owed, and the dismissal is very likely unfair. Our page on gross misconduct and summary dismissal sets out what does and does not reach the threshold, and the guide to being dismissed without warning covers the first 48 hours.
How Notice Fixes the Date of Dismissal
The notice period does more than put money in the final payslip. Under section 1 of the Unfair Dismissals Acts, the date of dismissal is the date on which notice expires or, where no proper notice was given, the date on which proper contractual or statutory notice would have expired. The six-month limit for a WRC complaint under section 8(2) runs from that date. So an employee with seven years’ service who is told to leave on 1 March without notice or pay in lieu was owed four weeks, and the date of dismissal is 29 March, not 1 March. That later date can rescue a complaint that would otherwise be out of time. It can also be disputed: employers argue for the earliest reading, and an employee who files on day 180 counting from the later date is inviting a preliminary argument they do not need. The safe course is to lodge within six months of the day you were told and to argue the later date only if you must. The WRC Deadline Calculator works the statutory notice and both dates through from your own service and the day you were told, and the guide to the six-month time limit and reasonable cause explains how narrow the extension to twelve months is.
Where to Bring the Claim: WRC or the Civil Courts
A wrongful dismissal claim has two possible forums. At the WRC, a complaint under the Minimum Notice Acts goes in through the eComplaint portal, usually on the same form as the unfair dismissal complaint, and is decided by the same adjudication officer at the same hearing; the WRC does not award legal costs, so each side pays its own whatever the result, and the WRC applies its time limits strictly, so the practical course is to lodge the notice complaint within the same six months. The civil courts are the forum for a breach of contract claim where the contractual notice period is long and the sum at stake justifies court proceedings, or where the employee is outside the WRC’s reach altogether. Court proceedings carry costs rules that the WRC does not, and they are explained before any are issued. For most employees the WRC route is the right one, because the notice claim is a smaller companion to the unfair dismissal claim rather than a case in its own right.
What We Do
The firm acts mainly for employees who have been dismissed without their notice, and also advises employers on ending contracts lawfully, never both sides of the same dispute. For an employee, the first consultation checks the contract against the statute, fixes the date of dismissal, confirms whether the summary dismissal exception can be made out on the employer’s own account, and lodges the notice and unfair dismissal complaints together. The WRC offers free, voluntary and confidential mediation before any hearing, and Richard O’Shea is a Law Society accredited mediator. Where the dismissal came as part of a redundancy, the redundancy side is covered by our sister site at redundancysolicitors.ie. Where the employee resigned rather than being dismissed, the question is one of constructive dismissal instead. The initial consultation is a fixed fee set out on our fees page.
Dismissed Without Your Notice?
Bring the contract, the dismissal letter and your start date. One consultation establishes the notice you were owed, the date of dismissal it produces, and the deadline for both claims.
Call 01 5827148