Minister for Labour Affairs Announces Reform of the Employment Appeals Tribunal(EAT) Procedures – Jul '07

On 14th June 2007, the then Minister for Labour Affairs, Mr. Tony Killeen, published the Report of the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) Procedures Revision Group. This group was set up in February 2007 to examine the procedures of the EAT, and to make recommendations on improving its service to employers and employees.

One of the key recommendations of the report is the introduction of a preliminary process prior to a substantive hearing. The Minister stated that this would assist in clarifying the issues in dispute and could potentially lead to an early settlement between the parties. Mr. Killeen has asked his officials to put in place the structures necessary to enable the introduction of this preliminary process as soon as possible. The preliminary process would take place after the exchange of initial documentation, and before the substantive hearing. It would entail a pre-examination of each case by a single member of the Tribunal where the parties would give an outline of their respective cases (the substantive hearing requires three members of the Tribunal). The preliminary hearing would confirm the basic factual information, seek to identify the core issues between the parties, and, in so far as it is the wish of the parties, seek to facilitate a resolution by way of a settlement between the employer and employee.

Other recommendations of note include:

• Determinations of the Tribunal should be publicly available on the EAT website;
• Enable the Tribunal to facilitate the expansion of claims in appropriate circumstances (e.g. if, during a hearing, it becomes obvious that the claimant would be entitled to relief under another piece of employment legislation, beyond the piece of legislation under which the claim is being made, the claimant should not be barred from the entitlement simply because it was not included on his/her initial application form).

The Group also made a recommendation with regard to the policy on compensation for unfair dismissal. While the Group accepted that it was outside of its mandate on EAT procedures, it felt that it was relevant to the objective of improving the fairness of the EAT process. It recommended that consideration be given to amending the law to remove the "actual loss" provision attached to unfair dismissal compensation. This provision places a limit on compensation to the actual financial loss suffered by the employee as a result of the dismissal, which, depending on circumstances, may be modest, e.g. if the employee commenced in a new job shortly after the dismissal. In this case, even where an employer may have severely breached the employee's rights, only a small amount of compensation may be payable by the employer (the IBEC representative in the Group dissented from this recommendation).