Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Ronan  Herlihy

Houses Of The Oireachtas

Representatives

Niamh McGowan B.L. instructed by In House Counsel

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 39 of the Redundancy Payments Act, 1967

CA-00073868-001

29/07/2025

The complainant was employed under the Scheme for the Provision of Secretarial Assistance for Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

He was paid as a PAYE worker on a fixed term contract as a Parliamentary Assistant (election to election) and it was not renewed by his employer.

A preliminary issue arises as to whether the named respondent was his employer.

The complainant gave evidence on affirmation.

The following was submitted by way of written submission.

The complainant was awarded ‘Voluntary Early Redundancy’ but not awarded statutory redundancy, and this is the basis for his complaint.

The redundancy was not voluntary, and he had no choice as he was not offered a position. His previous employer was entitled to employ a special advisor and a private secretary both of which are assigned the relevant department and not by the Houses of the Oireachtas.

The position he held was subsumed by three others, two of whom were new. After a six month period his previous employer offered his previous role under a different type of contract and also hired a family relative, both of which she is within her rights to do.  However, this put him at a disadvantage in seeking a new contract.

To the best of his knowledge the individual who was offered his role after six months is employed under a separate scheme to his. To the best of his knowledge, his successor is employed under the Scheme for Secretarial Assistance. Therefore, he would argue that the previous position he was contracted under no longer exists in the same form.

Additionally, he would also argue that his previous role was filled, and his duties and tasks were delegated to three other employees, two of whom are not employed by the Houses of the Oireachtas, therefore his previous employer either intentionally or otherwise was able to delegate all his previous roles and responsibilities to three other employees without filling his previous position as a Parliamentary Assistant.

The complainant made an additional submissionin response to the respondent’s submission.

“The Service will continue to ensure that any redundancy payment found to be owing by a Member under the 1967 Act is paid; but the Service is not the employer of the Members’ employees”. This is why he named the Houses of the Oireachtas as the respondent.

While it is accepted that he worked in practice for a Member of Dáil Éireann, this complaint concerns whether his employment ended by reason of redundancy and whether his statutory redundancy entitlement was properly assessed and determined and he will outline in further points how the Houses of the Oireachtas failed to assess his eligibility for statutory redundancy which you have also clearly stated that the ‘service will continue to ensure that any redundancy payment found to be owing by a Member under the 1967 Act is paid”

Regarding the absence of a Signed Contract of Employment, a central issue in this case is the reliance on the existence and terms of an alleged contract of employment. However, his contract of employment was never signed by either party. he was never provided with a signed copy, and no express agreement was ever made limiting the duration of his employment to the term of the Dáil.

He has written confirmation from the Houses of the Oireachtas Service, by email dated November 25th,  confirming that no signed contract of employment was ever forwarded to them by the Member.

Where contractual terms are now being relied upon to deny a statutory redundancy entitlement, the absence of a signed contract is highly material. The Scheme for Secretarial Assistance provides that the Service will not provide a payroll mechanism unless a contract of employment is in place, and that a copy of that contract must be furnished to the Service within one month.

Despite this requirement payroll was provided throughout his employment, no signed contract was ever furnished to the Service, and he was never informed that the Service did not hold a signed contract.

This raises a fundamental issue. Either the Scheme was not complied with, or a signed contract exists and has not been produced. Either scenario undermines the reliance now placed on alleged contractual terms.

Furthermore, given the fact that Houses of the Oireachtas, cannot unilaterally pay staff without a valid contract and are obliged to follow the procedural rules for public money. Hence, the fact that the absence of a signed contract in this matter was never brought to his attention is highly concerning.

Redundancy Application and Failure to Clarify Material Information

His application for the Payment of Voluntary Early Retirement / Severance and/or Statutory Redundancy included a specific question asking whether, where no contract was being offered to the outgoing employee, a contract was being offered to an immediate family member. The form expressly states that this has implications for the payment of statutory redundancy.

This section was left blank by the employer. No clarification was sought. Subsequently, the Member hired another Parliamentary Assistant. While a cousin may not fall within a strict definition of immediate family member, the purpose of the question is clearly to identify continuity of employment within close familial or personal relationships.

The failure to clarify this omission before determining that no redundancy entitlement arose is a significant procedural flaw.

Redundancy Test

Redundancy must be assessed by reference to the employee, not the abstract continuation of a role. As per the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission Act 2009, Section 9. A TD ‘ceases to be a member of Dáil Éireann, following a dissolution of that House”. he submits that he was employed by his employer in the 33rd Dáil and any subsequent election to a different Dáil be it the 34th or other has no connection to his eligibility to statutory redundancy.

His employment ended. Another individual was hired into a Parliamentary Assistant role several months later. This is consistent with replacement and undermines the assertion that no redundancy situation arose.

 How was it deemed that no statutory redundancy was due, if all the information needed to make such a decision wasn’t available?

The severance payment he received was discretionary and separate from statutory redundancy. he did not waive, and could not waive, his statutory entitlement to redundancy under the 1967 Act.

Furthermore, the VER package is not provided in the employment contracts as it is not guaranteed - the VER is a matter at all times for the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

In conclusion, taken together, the absence of a signed contract, confirmation that no signed contract was ever furnished to the Service, non-compliance with the Scheme requirements, failure to clarify material omissions on the redundancy application, and the subsequent hiring of another Parliamentary Assistant demonstrate that his statutory redundancy entitlement was not properly assessed.

Additionally, it states in the letter that, “You did not apply for a redundancy payment at this time”. The complainant submits that his employment ended by reason of redundancy and that he is entitled to statutory redundancy pay under the Redundancy Payments Act 1967 (as amended)

The complainant alleges that he was employed on a fixed-term contract as a Parliamentary Assistant to a member of the Houses of the Oireachtas, and that his contract was not renewed. He alleges that he was not paid a statutory redundancy payment following the determination of his fixed-term contract. He makes repeated reference in his Complaint Form to his “previous employer”; this is a reference to the member of Dáil Éireann who employed him, and who chose not to offer him a new specified-purpose contract when his previous contract was terminated at the dissolution of the 33rd Dáil.

He argues that he should have been paid statutory redundancy, because:

(a)      The determination of his contract of employment was not voluntary.

(b)     His position was “subsumed” by, and his duties delegated to, three other employees of the Member, two of whom were new employees assigned to the Member from a different agency.

(c)      His previous role was filled after a six-month period by a relative of the Member, which put him at a disadvantage in seeking a new contract of employment.

(d)     The individual who replaced him was employed under a different scheme to the scheme under which he was employed.

In subsequent correspondence received by the complainant dated  December 22nd, 2025, he says that he never entered into a signed written contract of employment with the Member for whom he worked and that she hired a new Parliamentary Assistant to replace him for the 34th Dáil, which is a different Dáil than the one during which he worked for the Member.

He also states that the administrative scheme under which he worked was not complied with, in that he was paid by the Houses of the Oireachtas Service notwithstanding the fact that the Member for whom he worked did not provide a signed written contract of employment to the Houses of the Oireachtas Service.

No clarification was sought by the Houses of the Oireachtas Service in respect of the omission on the Severance application form jointly submitted by the complainant and the Member, as to whether the post previously carried out by the complainant was to be filled by an immediate family member of the Member.

The  complainant also has a complaint under the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 on the basis that no written contract of employment was provided by the Member to the Service, and that “thefailuretoissue orinformmeofthiscontractconstitutesaclearbreachofstatutoryobligationsand engagestheprotections”of the 1994 Act.

While the complainant has brought his claim against the “Houses of the Oireachtas”, it is assumed that he refers to the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission (the “Commission”), a body established by statute to provide for the running of the Houses of the Oireachtas, and to perform certain functions on behalf of the Houses of the Oireachtas, and on behalf of the members of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann.

The respondent is not the complainant’s employer, and cannot be liable to him for a failure to make a redundancy payment under the 1967 Act. His employer, as he himself acknowledges on his Complaint Form, is the Member for whom he worked. The Member has not been joined to these proceedings.

The respondent acts as a payroll administrator for the Members of the Oireachtas, including the Member by whom the complainant was employed. Based on information provided to the Respondent by the Member in December 2025, following the determination of the Complainant’s specified-purpose contract, and the re-election of the Member to the Dáil, the Respondent did not make a redundancy payment to the complainant on the Member’s behalf.

The fact that the respondent is not the complainant’s employer means that the Complainant’s case under the 1967 Act cannot succeed. Without prejudice to this position, the respondent submits that the Member who employed the complainant was re-elected to the Dáil in November 2024. The 34th Dáil began sitting on 18 December 2024.

The complainant’s contract of employment did not end until 10 January 2025. The Member, by reason of re-election, retained a statutory right to the services of a Parliamentary Assistant and did in fact retain a Parliamentary Assistant, who commenced employment on June 3rd, 2025. As such, no redundancy situation occurred.

He is out of time to bring a complaint under the 1994 Act, and has provided no reasonable cause for his failure to bring the claim within time. Again, the respondent is not the complainant’s employer under the 1994 Act. The employer, as defined in section 1(1) of the 1994 Act, is the Member for whom the complainant worked.

The complainant commenced employment with the Member on 16 October 2023, as a Parliamentary Assistant. Prior to this, the complainant was employed by a member of the Seanad, first as a  Secretarial Assistant and then as an Administrative Assistant, from 20 April 2020 to 15 October 2023.

Members of the Oireachtas have a constitutional and statutory entitlement to secretarial facilities to assist them in the performance of their constitutional duties. One of the ways in which these secretarial facilities are provided is by way of the payment of staff employed by the Members as secretarial assistance. These staff members are employed pursuant to an administrative scheme called the SchemefortheProvisionof Secretarial Assistance for Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas and Qualifying Parties, otherwise known as the Scheme for Secretarial Assistance (the “SSA” or the “Scheme”).

The complainant was employed as a Parliamentary Assistant by the Member under this Scheme which entitles one to employ one Administrative Assistant and one Parliamentary Assistant, or to employ one Administrative Assistant, and use the allowance otherwise provided for the employment of a Parliamentary Assistant for the purchase of secretarial services from a third party, or from a temporary employee (who is also employed directly by the Member).

Under the terms of the SSA, Parliamentary Assistants are employed by Members under specified-purpose contracts, which are determined on a date (the “Termination Date”), calculated by reference, inter alia, to the date of dissolution of the Dáil, six weeks after the polling day in the General Election for the next Dáil. Each specified-purpose contract is a new contract, connected to the lifetime of the Dáil (or the Member’s membership of the Dáil).

Following the General Electionon November29th,  2024,the Member was re-electedtoDáilÉireann.Shedecidednottore-engagethecomplainant. A Voluntary Early Retirement/Severance/Statutory Redundancy ApplicationForm(the“ApplicationForm”),signedbyboththecomplainant andthe Memberanddated December19th, 2024,wassubmittedtotherespondentbythe complainant,byemailonthatdate.

On the Application Form, the complainant ticked the box for “Severancepayment–Noofferofemployment–employerdoesnotoffernew contract for Dáil/Seanad term”. He did not tick the box marked “Redundancy and Severance payment – Post no longer exists – Member of Dáil Éireann decides to cease to employ a Parliamentary Assistant and to instead claim the allowance provided for by S.I. 84/2010”.

In line with the terms of the SSA, the Complainant’s contract was determined on 10 January 2025. He also received a Severance payment of €17,832.11.

The Member confirmed with the respondent on December 5th, 2024, that she intended to employ a Parliamentary Assistant under the SSA for the 34th Dáil.

Subsequent to her re-election, the Member was made a Minister for State. This entitled her to two further employees, relating to the Member’s work as a Minister of State. These additional employees did not affect her entitlement to hire a Parliamentary Assistant under the SSA.

The Member hired a Parliamentary Assistant under the SSA on 3 June 2025. The Respondent confirmed with the Member in August 2025 that the person hired by the Member in this role is not a “family member”, as defined in section 7(4A) of the 1967 Act.

Based on re-election to Dáil Éireann, and her decision to retain the services of a Parliamentary Assistant under the SSA, the Respondent did not pay statutory redundancy to the complainant following the determination of his employment contract with the Member on 10 January 2025, because the complainant had not been dismissed by the Member by reason of redundancy.

The complainant brings his claim under the 1967 Act. Section 39(15) of the 1967 Act allows an employee to make a claim to the WRC in respect of “anydecisionofan employer under the Act…”. Section 19(1) of the Act places an obligation on the employer of a worker who has been dismissed and is entitled to a redundancy payment to pay a redundancy lump sum to the employee. Section 7(1) of the Act provides for the entitlement of an employee to be paid a redundancy payment in certain circumstances where the employee has been “dismissed by his employer by reason of redundancy…”. Section 9(1) defines “dismissal”, for the purposes of the 1967 Act, as including the cesser of purpose of a specified-purpose contract “underwhichtheemployeeis employedbytheemployer”without the renewal of the contract or a similar contract.

Section 2(1) of the 1967 Act sets out the following relevant definitions of “employer”, “employee”, and “contract of employment”. The words “employee” and ‘employer’ are defined in section 2(1):

Specifically “employer” is defined as follows: "employer"means,inrelationtoanemployee,thepersonwithwhomthe employee has entered into or for whom the employee works under (or, where theemploymenthasceased,enteredintoorworkedunder)acontractof employment

A “contract of employment” is defined, insofar as is relevant for pour purposes, as a “contract of service or apprenticeship”.

The test to be applied in determining whether there exists a contract of service between two parties was set out by the Supreme Court in the case of Revenuecommissionersv Karshan(Midlands)Ltdt/aDomino’sPizza [2023] IESC 24 at paragraph 253 as follows:  

(i)        Does the contract involve the exchange of wage or other remuneration for work?

(ii)     Ifso,istheagreementonepursuanttowhichtheworkerisagreeingto provide their own services, and not those of a third party, to the employer?

(iii)    If so, does the employer exercise sufficient control over the putative employee torendertheagreementonethatiscapableofbeinganemployment agreement?

(iv)    If these three requirements are met the decision maker must then determine whetherthetermsofthecontractbetweenemployerandworkerinterpreted inthelightoftheadmissiblefactualmatrixandhavingregardtotheworking arrangements between the parties as disclosed by the evidence, are consistent with a contract of employment, or with some other form of contract having regard, in particular, to whether the arrangements point to the putative employee working for themselves or for the putative employer.

(v)     Finally,itshouldbedeterminedwhetherthereisanythingintheparticular legislativeregimeunderconsiderationthatrequiresthecourttoadjustor supplement any of the foregoing.

The complainant is employed as an Parliamentary Assistant to a Member of Dáil Éireann. This relationship is governed by a contract of employment between him and the Member, to which the Respondent is not a party and does not have a contractual relationship of any kind with the Complainant.

The role of the respondent, is, interalia, to facilitate the payment of Members’ staff and to process redundancy payments where a Member’s employee has been dismissed due to redundancy. But it is an administrative function only, and Respondent is not a party to any employment relationship between the Members and their staff. The Respondent has no input or control over the direction given by Members to their employees, nor does it have any control over the work assigned to employee by the Members. Other than its statutory role as facilitator of certain administrative functions, the Respondent does not play a role in the employment relationship.

The role played by the Respondent in administering payroll for individuals who provide secretarial facilities to Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas is unusual, and somewhat complex. Under section 4(2)(c)(i) of the HOC Acts, certain functions of the Minister for Finance in respect of the provision of secretarial facilities to Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas were transferred to the Respondent.5 The statutory basis for the payment of allowances to Members is set out in section 2(1)(c) of the Oireachtas (Allowances to Members) Act 1962, as amended.6

Pursuant to the powers transferred to it by the HOC Acts, the Respondent has promulgated regulations governing the entitlement of Member of the Houses of the Oireachtas to secretarial staff and facilities. The operative regulations during the Complainant’s employment with the Member were the Oireachtas (Ministerial and Parliamentary Facilities) Regulations 20217 (“the 2021 Regulations”). Under regulation 4 of the 2021 Regulations, Members are entitled to avail of secretarial facilities, including a Parliamentary Assistant, who is chosen by and hired by the Member. The individual Members are responsible for their employees’ work, and the Respondent plays no role whatsoever in this.

These employees are not pulled from a standing pool of civil servants but are instead chosen from the general public by the relevant Member and employed by them; membership of political staff is fundamentally a political role and, while there are commonalities among them (such as answering constituents’ queries), the actual tasks assigned depend on political realities and purposes. Each individual Member is free to fulfil their constitutional mandate in the manner which they see fit, and to deploy their staff, and assign them tasks, however they so choose. One Member may choose to have their staff focus on policy matters, another on constituency concerns; the day-to-day operation of the employment relationship, and control of the tasks performed, are entirely at the Member’s discretion.

Regulation 12 of the 2021 Regulations expressly provides that persons providing secretarial facilities to Members are not employees of the Commission, but are employed by way of a contract of employment between the staff and the Members themselves, stating as follows:

ApersonprovidingsecretarialfacilitiesundertheseRegulationsisthe employeeofthememberofDáilÉireannorofSeanadÉireannorofthe qualifyingpartytowhomortowhichthefacilityisprovidedunderacontract of employment made between them.

The administration of secretarial services by the Respondent is governed by the SSA. This Scheme is incorporated into the terms of the employment contracts entered into betweenMembersoftheHousesofthe Oireachtasandtheirsecretarialstaff.The Scheme also expressly provides that the Members’ staff, such as the complainant in this case,areemployeesoftheMembersthemselves,andnotoftheRespondent.

The Scheme states at p. 2:

Under the Scheme, Secretarial Assistants, Administrative Assistants, Parliamentary Assistants, Administrators, Senior Administrators and Chefs de CabinetaredirectlyemployedbyMembersandbyqualifyingpartiesbutare paidby the Commission.The Commissionalsoregulates the number ofstaff employed under the Scheme and has oversight of the operation of the Scheme. However,theMinisterforPublicExpenditureandReformretainsauthorityfor termsandconditionsofemployment(e.g.payandhoursofwork)underthe Scheme.

At page 5, the SSA states as follows:

Membersareentitledtoemploystaffassetoutbelow.Itisimportanttonote that Members are the employers and have certain obligations (see Employers’ Guide to Human Resources). The role of the Commission/the Service is simply to providepayrollandotheradministrativeservices.

As Members’ staff are employed directly by Members under contracts of employment, they are not civil servants within the meaning of the Civil Service Regulation Act 1956. For instance, they are not required to pay the Annual Superannuation Contribution and indeed the complainant was not subject to this contribution. Instead, the complainant was a member of a separate, non-contributary pension scheme, the ‘Superannuation Scheme for Officers employed under the Scheme for the provision of Secretarial Assistance for Members of the Houses of Oireachtas and Qualifying Parties’. In addition, the Respondent does not set the terms and conditions of employment of Members’ employees. As noted in the SSA, these are set by the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation.

The above position is also reflected in the Template Contract of Employment appended to the SSA, which the Respondent recommends that Members use when hiring their secretarial staff.8 The complainant claims never to have entered into a written employment contract with the Member; this is a matter between himself and the Member. But Parliamentary Assistants are provided to the Members under the terms of the SSA, so the complainant can only have been employed by the Member as a Parliamentary Assistant under the terms of the SSA.

Not only are the above documents, which form the basis of the Complainant’s employment, entirely clear that the Respondent is not the employer of the Complainant, the matter has also been the subject of consideration by the High Court, the Workplace Relations Commission, and the Employment Appeals Tribunal; all three of those bodies have reached the same conclusion.

In the case of Holliday v The Houses of the Oireachtas (Unreported, High Court, Keane J, July 14th, 1993), Keane J considered the employment status of Members’ staff under the scheme which obtained at the time, which was the non-statutory predecessor of the 2021 Regulations. Keane J made the following findings:

(e)     The applicant in that case was a Parliamentary Secretary under the scheme and was deemed by that scheme to be the employee of the relevant Member of the Oireachtas. The entire case turned on the question of the applicant’s employment status.

(f)       The Minister for Finance (who was a named Respondent, as the case predates the establishment of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission) was simply a ‘conduit’ for payment of the Member’s employee. It was not improper to name the paymaster on the P45 as this reflected the source of monies being paid.

(g)      The circumstances in which the Secretarial Staff are provided for Members was a matter for the Minister for Finance and the Oireachtas and not a matter for the Courts unless there is an illegality to redress.

(h)     The choice of employee was entirely a matter for the Member. Employees cannot be converted into employees of the Minister.

(i)       It there was to be any criticism of the scheme of employment for Members it was that it should be regulated by statute.

The scheme in question is now regulated by statute, in the form of the 2021 Regulations.

In the case of Employee v Employer (UD432/2012), the Employment Appeals Tribunal found that the Hollidaydecision continued to be good law. Further, the Tribunal rejected any argument that the Oireachtas was somehow the ‘co-employer’ of such an employee, finding instead that the Oireachtas was merely the paymaster with a limited role; further, the Tribunal rejected the idea that the employee was somehow seconded to the Member. The retirement of the employing Deputy did not cause the claimant in that case to somehow become employed by the Houses of the Oireachtas, and any claim would have lain against her employer, the Member.

In A Parliamentary Assistant v A Dáil Deputy (ADJ-00009565) and A Parliamentary Assistant v A Service Provider (ADJ-00009566), the complainant, a Parliamentary Assistant, brought a claim for unfair dismissal against their employing Member, that Member’s political party, and the Houses of the Oireachtas Service.

The WRC, relying on the High Court decision in Holliday, found that the Service was merely a service provider, and that the complainant’s sole employer was the relevant Member. In that case, the employee was found to be entitled to a redundancy payment as against his employing Member, because the Member in question had decided not to retain a Parliamentary Assistant, and avail of the alternative secretarial facilities allowance instead.

Further, it was found that where a Parliamentary Assistant was employed consecutively by different Members, each was counted as a separate employer. This finding emphasizes that the employment relationship is between the employee and their individual employing Member.

It is clear, on the basis of the above, that it is settled law that the complainant is not, and cannot be considered to be, the employee of the Commission or the Service. The complainant has no employment contract with the Respondent, within the meaning of section 2(1) Act; indeed, the complainant has no contractual relationship with the Respondent of any kind. Further, an application of the test set out by the Supreme Court in Karshanmakes it clear that a contract of service existed between the complainant and the Member, and bot between the complainant and the Respondent. Not only did the Member exercise control over the work carried out by the complainant without any input from the Respondent, both the relevant factual matrix and the legal framework support the contention that the Member is the Complainant’s employer. Indeed, this is expressly stated to be the legal position in regulation 12 of the 2021 Regulations.

The 1967 Act gives the complainant a cause of action against his employer in the event that he believes that he is entitled to be paid statutory redundancy. The Respondent is not the Complainant’s employer.

As set out above, the Respondent is not the Complainant’s employer. However, without prejudice to this position, the Respondent also notes that section 7(2) of the 1967 Act sets out the reasons to which a dismissal must be wholly or mainly attributable in order to give rise to a redundancy payment. In this case, as far as the Respondent is aware, none of these conditions are met:

(j)       The Member was re-elected to the Dáil and continued to employ a Parliamentary Assistant under the SSA.

(k)     The role of Parliamentary Assistant is unchanged.

(l)       The Member, and not the Respondent, determines the work to be carried out by the Parliamentary Assistant, and the manner in which that work is to be performed.

(m)   The Member replaced the complainant as Parliamentary Assistant with another employee who is not a family member, as defined in section 7(4A) of the 1967 Act.

(n)     While the Member has taken on two additional staff, these employees are provided in respect of her new position as a Minister for State, and do not affect her entitlement to hire a Parliamentary Assistant, which arises from her membership of the Dáil.

The role of Parliamentary Assistant

Under the SSA, a Parliamentary Assistant can only be employed upon completion of an assessment procedure. This is explained at page 14 of the SSA:

The qualification procedure currently in place is identical to that set out above, and in Appendix C of the SSA, under which the complainant was hired. The role of Parliamentary Assistant has therefore not changed, as far as the Respondent is concerned. The manner in which Members direct their staff in their work on a day-to-day basis is a matter for the Members themselves, and the Respondent has no input into this.

The complainant seeks to bring a claim under the 1994 Act, by way of his correspondence dated 26 December 2025. Any complaint under the 1994 Act must be brought within six months of the alleged contravention.  It is not entirely clear from the Complainant’s letter of 26 December 2025 what breach he is alleging; but the Respondent understands the breach to relate to the failure of the Member to provide him with a written employment contract when he commenced employment with the Member in 2023.

The definitions of “employer” and “employee” contained in section 1 of the 1994 Act are materially identical to those contained in the 1967 Act, and set out above. For the same reasons upon which the Respondent relies in arguing that it is not the Complainant’s employer for redundancy purposes, it is also not the Complainant’s employer under the 1994 Act. The complainant cannot therefore clam against the Respondent for a breach by his employer of the 1994 Act. Without prejudice to that position, the Respondent notes that the complainant appears to be out of time to bring a claim under the 1994 Act.

The Complainant’s claim under both the 1967 and 1994 Acts is misconceived, as the Respondent is not the Complainant’s employer. In addition, and without prejudice to the above position, his claim against the Respondent under the 1994 Act is time-barred.

He was not made redundant. His specified-purpose contract was determined subsequent to the dissolution of the 33rd Dáil, and his employer, the Member for whom he worked, hired a different Parliamentary Assistant to perform the same role as had previously been performed by the Complainant.

A critical, preliminary issue in respect of this complaint is whether the named respondent, ‘The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission’ is correctly identified as the complainant’s employer.

In making his complaint the complainant refers to the fact that the named respondent is responsible for paying his wages, and also relies on a somewhat technical point about whether he was ever issued with a contract of employment, and whether the respondent was correctly notified about his position.

To this, the respondent replies that the payment of wages is a purely administrative arrangement and that in every other respect, including the established tests to determine employment, or more precisely employee status the complainant was an employee of the elected Member of Dail Éireann for whom he was working.

These criteria were most recently set out in a refinement of the law on this point in Revenue Commissioners v Karshan (Midlands) Ltd t/a Domino’s Pizza [2023] IESC 24 ,

The respondent submitted that Members of the Oireachtas have an entitlement to secretarial facilities to assist them in the performance of their duties, including the payment of staff employed by them for ‘secretarial assistance’.

They are employed under an administrative scheme called the ‘SchemefortheProvisionof Secretarial Assistance for Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas and Qualifying Parties, otherwise known as the Scheme for Secretarial Assistance.

The respondent also says that Regulation 12 of the 2021 Regulations expressly provides that persons providing secretarial facilities to Members are not employees of the Commission (the respondent), but are employed by way of a contract of employment between the staff and the Members themselves, stating as follows:

ApersonprovidingsecretarialfacilitiesundertheseRegulationsisthe employeeofthememberofDáilÉireannorofSeanadÉireannorofthe qualifyingpartytowhomortowhichthefacilityisprovidedunderacontract of employment made between them.

This is abundantly clear, and it is hard to see what possible interpretation could be put on it other than what it plainly states; that the complainant was an employee of the member of the Houses of the Oireachtas, and not the Commission, this respondent in this complaint.

Evidence was adduced in respect of the redundancy paperwork (filled out by the complainant himself) in which he identified the TD as the employer.

The respondent also relied on a number of authorities both in the High Court and of this tribunal and its predecessor.  Holliday v The Houses of the Oireachtas (Unreported, High Court, Keane J, July 14th, 1993) In the case of Employee v Employer (UD432/2012), A Parliamentary Assistant v A Dáil Deputy (ADJ-00009565) and A Parliamentary Assistant v A Service Provider (ADJ-00009566).

The ‘Holliday’ case set out clearly the status of those who are employed on the same basis as the complainant, and which has been followed since. It is set out in the respondent’s submission above.

The complainant had made very little effort to displace this authority, and I can find no legal reason to do so given that the facts here are ‘on all fours’ with those in those cases.

For that reason, I find that the named respondent in respect of this complaint was not the complainant‘s employer and cannot be a respondent in respect of these complaint.

Accordingly, it is not well-founded.

For the reason set out above Complaint CA-00073868-001 is not well founded.

Redundancy