EDA2641

PARTIES:

DIVISION:

SUBJECT:

Appeal of Adjudication Officer Decision No.: ADJ-00041095 (CA-00052288-001)

BACKGROUND:

The Employee appealed the decision of the WRC Adjudication Officer under Section 83 (1), Employment Equality Acts, 1998 to 2021 on 3 January 2025.

A Labour Court hearing took place on 23 July 2026.

The following is the Determination of the Court:

DETERMINATION:

1. Appeal Details

This is an appeal by Mr Padraig McKenna against a Decision of an Adjudication Officer (ADJ-00041095/CA-00052288-001) made under the Employment Equality Acts 1998 to 2021 (the Acts) in a complaint against Dundalk Institute of Technology. The Adjudication Officer found that the complaint was not well founded in a decision dated 23 May 2024.

For ease, the parties are referred to in the same way as at first instance, so Mr McKenna is referred to as “the Complainant” and Dundalk Institute of Technology as “the Respondent”.

The Complainant lodged a Notice of Appeal to the Labour Court on 3 January 2025, which was some seven months and two weeks after the Adjudication Officer’s decision issued and, therefore, outside of the 42-day period for bringing an appeal provided for in section 44(3) of the Workplace Relations Act 2015 (the 2015 Act) which applies to claims under the Acts in accordance with the provisions of section 83 of the Acts.

A hearing of the Court was held on 23 July 2026 in Dublin. The Complainant was unaccompanied at the hearing. The Respondent was represented by Ms Laura Kerin of Ibec. The Court heard submissions from both parties, and the Complainant gave evidence under oath, in respect of the time limit point. The Respondent called no witnesses.

2. Summary of the submission and evidence of the Complainant

On the appeal form, submitted on 3 January 2025, the Complainant indicated his intention to apply for an extension of time for late lodgment of the appeal due to “exceptional circumstances”. The steps required for the Complainant to make this application are clearly set out on the appeal form, including the requirement to include in his written submissions the grounds on which the application is being made. While the Complainant made written submissions to the Court on 3 July 2025, which purported to address the substantive issue, those submissions made no reference to an extension of time application or to any exceptional circumstances which prevented him lodging his appeal within the statutory time limit. When invited by the Court, at the hearing, to make such an application the Complainant said that the reason he did not lodge his appeal in time was that he lacked an understanding of his statutory right of appeal to the Labour Court and the timelines involved and also set out that he had no means by which he could access legal representation.

The Complainant said that initially he had not been aware that he had an appeal to the Labour Court from the Workplace Relations Commission (the WRC) and instead considered that he would have to appeal the Adjudication Officer’s decision to the High Court, something he could not afford to do.

The Complainant maintained that he did not receive the Adjudication Officer’s decision from the WRC and that he received no letter from the WRC advising him of his right to appeal. The Complainant told the Court that the Adjudication Officer’s decision in respect of his case had gone to a third party and not to him and that the effects of a significant storm had left him without power for two weeks and unable to lodge his appeal.

The Complainant said that he only obtained the decision of the Adjudication Officer from the WRC website, its existence having been brought to his attention by a third party. He said that he met that third party in the summer, and the third party advised him that an appeal was to the Labour Court and not the High Court.

The Complainant said that he was a lay litigant and that he had experience of the District, Circuit and High Courts and that in all those courts flexibility was shown to lay litigants to allow them to do things correctly. He wanted the Labour Court to grant him leeway and hear the substantive case.

3. Summary Position of the Respondent

The Respondent submitted that the Complainant had failed to provide any evidence of exceptional circumstances explaining his failure to meet the mandated statutory time frame for the making of an appeal from a decision of an Adjudication Officer of the WRC and the Labour Court therefore lacked jurisdiction to hear the Complainant’s appeal.

4. Relevant Legislation & Preliminary Issue

Sections 44 (2), (3) and (4) of the Workplace Relations Act 2015 Act provide as follows:

(2) An appeal under this section shall be initiated by the party concerned giving a notice in writing to the Labour Court containing such particulars as are determined by the Labour Court in accordance with rules under subsection (5) of section 20 of the Act of 1946 and stating that the party concerned is appealing the decision to which it relates.

(3) Subject to subsection (4), a notice under subsection (2) shall be given to the Labour Court not later than 42 days from the date of the decision concerned.

(4) The Labour Court may direct that a notice under subsection (2) may be given to it after the expiration of the period specified in subsection (3) if it is satisfied that the notice was not so given before such expiration due to the existence of exceptional circumstances.

Rule 54 of the Labour Court Rules 2024 provides that: -

“The Court may, in its discretion, give a preliminary ruling on any aspect of the case where it is satisfied that time and expense may be saved by the giving of such a ruling and/or where it has the potential to be determinative of the case”.

The Court decided, with the agreement of the parties, that it would consider the preliminary matter in relation to time limits for the appeal in the first instance. It advised the parties that if it determined that exceptional circumstances arose to prevent the lodging of an appeal within time, a further hearing would be scheduled to consider the substantive appeal. If the Court determined that the appeal was lodged outside the time limits set down in the Act, a determination would issue to that effect.

5. Deliberations

The matter for consideration by the Court is whether “exceptional circumstances” arose during the 42-day period for giving a notice of appeal to the Court such that they prevented the lodging of the appeal on or before the expiry of the period, which in this case was 3 July 2024. 

The burden of proof in establishing the existence of “exceptional circumstances” rests with the Complainant.

To grant an extension of time, there must be a causal link between the circumstances cited and the delay in lodging the appeal to the Court. The Court must be satisfied, as a matter of probability, that had those circumstances not been present the Complainant would have lodged the appeal in time.

The extent of the Complainant’s submission to the Court at the hearing was that he was not familiar with the time limits that applied, that he was a lay litigant and that he should be “granted leeway” on that basis. The Complainant said that initially he had not been aware that he had an appeal to the Labour Court from the WRC, instead considered that he would have to appeal the Adjudication Officer’s decision to the High Court, something he could not afford to do. The Complainant maintained that he did not receive the Adjudication Officer’s decision from the WRC and that he received no letter from the WRC advising him of his right to appeal. The Complainant told the Court that the Adjudication Officer’s decision in respect of his case had gone to a third party and not to him and that the effects of a significant storm had left him without power for two weeks and unable to lodge his appeal.

In examining the documents provided by the Complainant to the Court it was clear that the Complainant’s reference to his documents being sent to a third party and to the impact of the storm addressed issues which arose outside of the statutory time period for the appeal. The documents sent to a third party and not the Complainant referred to the Respondent’s submissions to the WRC being sent by the WRC to a third party in February 2023 before the May 2024 decision was issued. The Court does not accept the Complainant’s theory that the decision in his case was also sent to the third party and none of the documents the Complainant provided to the Court was supportive of that theory. The reference to a storm appeared to be a reference to Storm Éowyn which impacted Ireland at the end of January 2025 after the Complainant had already lodged his appeal to the Labour Court.

The Complainant gave conflicting evidence in respect of how and when he received the decision of the Adjudication Officer and when he became aware that the appeal of such a decision lies to the Labour Court and not the High Court. The best the Court could glean from his evidence was that he met the third party (to whom his WRC documents had previously been sent) in the summer of 2024 and was advised by that party that they had previously appealed their own matters from the WRC to the Labour Court. At the time of that meeting the Complainant was in possession of the Adjudication Officer’s decision in respect of his complaint, the subject of the within appeal. The Complainant initially said that this meeting had taken place in the summer of 2025, as he “didn’t think it was two years ago” and it was after that meeting that he determined he would appeal the WRC decision to the Labour Court. It was clearly not possible for that meeting to have taken place in summer 2025 in circumstances where the Complainant’s appeal was lodged in January 2025. When it was put to the Complainant that the meeting with the third party would have to have taken place in the summer of 2024 (and not summer 2025) he sought to change his sworn evidence to say that it may not have been summer when they met. The documentation provided by the Complainant identified that the third party was aware of the decision in the Complainant’s case in June 2024 which is supportive of that date being in or around the date when the Complainant met with her in respect of his case.

The meaning of the expression "exceptional circumstances" has been considered extensively by this Court and other fora. In Joyce Fitzsimons-Markey v Gaelscoil Thulach na nÓg [2004] ELR 110, the Labour Court held as follows:

“The question for determination in this case is whether the applicant was prevented by exceptional circumstances from bringing her claim within the time limit prescribed by Section 77(6) of the Act.  That is pre-eminently a question of fact and degree. Each case must be decided on its own circumstances and the improbability of any two cases falling under the same set of circumstances makes it unlikely that the decision in any one case can be more than a rough guide to the decision in another.”

The Court went on to state:

“The Court must first consider if the circumstances relied upon by the applicant can be regarded as exceptional. If it answers that question in the affirmative the Court must then go on to consider if those circumstances operated so as to prevent the applicant from lodging her claim in time.”

In Byrne v PJ Quigley Limited [1995] ELR 205 the Employment Appeals Tribunal held that exceptional circumstances were “strong words” and meant “out of the ordinary, unusual, probably quite unusual but not necessarily highly unusual”. The Tribunal further stated that to extend time it must be satisfied that the exceptional circumstances “prevented” lodging the claim within the statutory time limit, and not merely that the exceptional circumstance caused or triggered the claim.

In McLoughlin v Murray Senior [2022] IEHC 537 Heslin J considered the term “exceptional circumstances” and noted that:

“70. The view expressed in the EAT's decision in Byrne v. PJ Quigley Ltd is that exceptional circumstances in the present context must be circumstances which are, at the very least, “quite unusual”. In my view, what is required goes somewhat further and I take this view for the following reasons.

71. The Oireachtas chose not to use, for example, the words good reason in s.44 (4). The bar was set higher. Nor did the Oireachtas employ the term special circumstances in that section. In my view, the bar was set higher still, by the use of the term exceptional.
72. …whereas the EAT used the term “quite unusual” in Byrne v PJ Quigley Ltd, I believe s. 44 (4) requires even more of the circumstances. In other words, exceptional seems to connote something even greater as regards the circumstances being well out of the ordinary – in short, not merely quite unusual, but highly unusual.”

In this case, a Notice of Appeal was lodged to the Labour Court on 3 January 2025, some seven months and two weeks after the Adjudication Officer issued his decision. For the Court to extend time, the Complainant must establish the existence of exceptional circumstances that explain the delay and provide a justifiable excuse for the delay. The Complainant failed to do this.

The Complainant relied on a lack of legal representation and lack of knowledge of the process of appeal and the related time limits as the basis for his contention that exceptional circumstances arose to prevent the lodging of an appeal within time. This Court has consistently held that ignorance of one’s legal rights, as opposed to the facts giving rise to those rights, cannot be accepted as an excuse for not observing the statutory time limit.

The Court does not expect parties to be legally represented and the appeal process is such that a lack of legal representation is not a barrier to access to the Court. The Court recognises that a lay litigant may be unfamiliar with the law, however, the information provided to parties when they receive decisions from the Workplace Relations Commission makes clear to them, in a manner that requires no legal training, that there is a limit of 42 days within which to appeal. The Complainant maintained that he did not receive the decision and accompanying letter from the WRC. The Complainant’s evidence was entirely unclear regarding when he said he did receive or access the decision of the Adjudication Officer but if the Court accepts that the Complainant did not receive the decision and accompanying letter he still has to satisfy the Court as to why he did not initiate the appeal either within the statutory appeal period or in a reasonable period thereafter. On the Complainant’s own account, although he sought to resile from his evidence in that regard, the Court is satisfied that the Complainant was in receipt of the decision of the Adjudication Officer by the end of June 2024. This was still within the statutory time limit period. The Complainant took no steps after that date until 3 January 2025, some six months later, before finally completing and submitting his appeal form. The Complainant provided no evidence, reason, justification or explanation for why he did not submit his appeal within a reasonable time after he obtained the decision.

The Court finds that the Complainant has not evidenced any exceptional circumstances during the statutory time period such that he was prevented from lodging his appeal in time, and he gave no reason at all why he did not lodge his appeal within a reasonable time from when he said he obtained the Adjudication Officer's decision.

In the Court’s judgment no valid explanation to properly account for the delay has been furnished that offers an excuse or explains the delay in lodging an appeal to the Labour Court outside the statutory time limit even with the Complainant’s account of not receiving the Adjudication Officer’s decision at the time it issued being accepted by the Court.  In all the circumstances, the Court is of the view that a justifiable basis upon which an extension of time could be granted has not been put forward in this case.  The Complainant does not meet the established threshold whereby the statutory timeframe within which he is permitted to appeal the Adjudication Officer’s decision can be enlarged due to “exceptional circumstances”.

A failure on the part of a Complainant to lodge an appeal on time deprives this Court of jurisdiction to hear the claim. As a result, the Court finds that it has no jurisdiction to hear the appeal.

6. Determination

The Court determines that the existence of “exceptional circumstances” has not been established by the Complainant to allow the extension of the statutory timeframe for giving a notice of appeal to the Court. 

It follows that the Court has no jurisdiction to hear the appeal.

The Court so determines.

	Signed on behalf of the Labour Court
	Niamh McGowan
CC	______________________
16/09/2026	Deputy Chairman

NOTE

Enquiries concerning this Determination should be in writing and addressed to Ms Ceola Cronin, Court Secretary.