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The High Court has ruled that a change in maternity leave rights should be reconsidered, as it affected nine teachers who had already notified their schools of their pregnancies.
Last year, an Employment Appeals Court (EAT) determined that teachers were not required to take accrued leave for them while they were on maternity leave during periods of school closure instead of during the school term.
The Minister of Education claimed that the EAT erred in law because there was no evidence to support the conclusion that the effect of a 2013 circular on maternity leave was the end of any right of teachers on time rather than the vacation accrued during maternity leave.
Judge Niamh Hyland discovered that the EAT was wrong and sent the matter for reconsideration by a newly constituted court.
All nine teachers, from eight primary schools, objected to the change introduced by the 2013 circular. They said it was introduced when all of them were already pregnant and had notified their schools of their pregnancy.
The school period
They argued that their existing rights under a previous circular, in 2011, which allowed such a license to be taken during the term of office, could not be eliminated by the 2013 circular. This was because they had the expectation that their license maternity leave for existing pregnancies would be governed by the 2011 circular.
They filed a complaint with a Rights Commissioner who rejected it. They successfully appealed to the EAT on the basis that the new agreement introduced by the 2013 circular constituted a violation of the 1994 Maternity Protection Act.
The minister, who took over the proceedings of the eight school boards, appealed that decision to the High Court on a matter of law.
Judge Hyland said that the EU Court of Justice found that three EU directives governing maternity leave, working time and equal treatment mean that a female worker can take her annual leave for a period other than the period of your maternity leave, regardless of when the collective Leave must be taken by agreement.
The judge found the determination section of the EAT decision to be “very difficult to decipher.”
The judge was satisfied that the matter should be returned for reconsideration to the EAT, or whatever composition is in place because, since this case was taken, the EAT has been in the process of liquidation. Since then, the Labor Court has become the sole appellate body in the workplace.
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