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The Superior Court has ruled that the Labor Appeals Court (EAT) must reconsider a finding about the accrued license fees of nine teachers who had notified their schools of their pregnancies before the license fees changed.
The court held last year that the nine were not required to take accrued leave during their maternity leave during school closings rather than class periods.
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.
The nine teachers, from eight primary schools, objected to the change introduced by the 2013 circular saying that it was introduced when all of them were already pregnant and had notified their schools of their pregnancy.
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 grounds 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.
The Minister said that the correct interpretation of the Maternity Protection Law was that all periods of school closure (summer, Christmas, Easter, intermediate holidays and other one-day holidays) qualify as “other leave (including sick leave or annual leave) to which the employee in question is entitled ”for the purposes of the relevant part of the law (section 22.4).
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.”
It had no reason to explain its conclusion that the 2013 circular violates the Maternity Protection Act and what is known as the EU Directive on pregnancy, it said.
There was no element in the EAT decision that identified “even in passing” the required factual context of the dispute or the legal basis necessary to support a conclusion on the basis of the legitimate expectation argument.
If the EAT’s justification for making the 2013 circular illegal was because requiring that accrued leave be taken during school closing days meant that the Maternity Protection Act would inevitably be violated, it was convinced that this was an error of law.
The lack of reasons provided by the EAT, even simple reasons that simply communicated the essence of its decision, prevented it from reaching the conclusion that there was indeed a legal basis for its decision.
While the professors argued that the decision should be referred to the EAT if the court overturned the decision, the minister had argued that it should be reversed and that the original decision of the Rights Commissioner should be upheld.
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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