Redundancy Letter Ireland (Redundancy Payments Acts)

In Irish law, a redundancy letter is the employer's written notice that a contract of employment is ending because the job itself has gone, not because of anything the employee did. Section 7(2) of the Redundancy Payments Act 1967 defines the situations that count. The business closes or leaves the place where the employee works, or needs fewer people for work of that kind, or will carry on with fewer staff. The work may also be done differently, or combined with tasks for which the employee is not trained. The dismissal must also be "for one or more reasons not related to the employee concerned", which is why a disguised performance dismissal labelled as redundancy rarely survives a challenge, whatever the redundancy letter says.

The letter has two jobs. For an employee with 104 weeks' continuous service it is the written notice of proposed dismissal that section 17 requires, given at least two weeks before the date of dismissal. It is also the contractual and statutory notice of termination. That makes it different from a dismissal letter, which ends employment for capability, competence or conduct after a disciplinary process, and from a lay-off notice, which suspends work temporarily while the contract continues. Our template covers the individual redundancy that follows genuine consultation.

Irish redundancy law rests on the Redundancy Payments Act 1967, as amended. It applies to employees of 16 and over in employment insurable for all benefits, in practice PRSI Class A, and to employees aged 66 or over who would be insurable but for their age. Section 7(5) fixes the qualifying period at 104 weeks of continuous employment, and Schedule 3 sets the lump sum at two weeks' normal weekly remuneration for each year of reckonable service plus one further week, with pay counted only up to a weekly ceiling fixed by regulation. Section 18 adds a redundancy certificate, due no later than the date of dismissal. The consolidated Redundancy Payments Act 1967 on the Law Reform Commission's Revised Acts shows every amendment in force.

Several other texts frame the letter. Section 7 of the Redundancy Payments Act 1979 gives a qualifying employee reasonable paid time off during the last two weeks of notice to look for work or arrange training, and the employee can confirm those absences with our leave request letters for Ireland. Notice itself follows section 4 of the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973, from one to eight weeks depending on service. Under section 6(3) of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, where colleagues in similar employment are kept on, a selection based on a prohibited reason or on a matter that would not justify dismissal, or one that breaches an agreed procedure, makes the dismissal unfair; section 6(7) adds a test of reasonableness. Larger cuts fall under the Protection of Employment Act 1977, with collective consultation and notice to the Minister. On tax, a statutory lump sum is exempt from income tax under section 203 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, while no State rebate has been paid to employers for redundancies on or after 1 January 2013. Our employment templates for Irish employers rely on the same statutes.

The classic case is a business that loses a large contract. A logistics firm drops from three shifts to two, a supervisor's role disappears, and after two consultation meetings the employer confirms the decision in a redundancy letter. Closures come second: a shop that shuts a branch, or a company that moves its back office abroad, owes each affected employee proper notice and the statutory lump sum.

Restructuring is subtler. When an employer automates invoicing or merges two part-time roles into one post requiring new skills, the redundancy rests on section 7(2)(d) or (e), and the letter must explain the change. Where several people do similar work and only some will go, the employer needs a selection pool and objective criteria, and the letter should say so plainly. Employers often forget employees with less than two years' service: they get no statutory lump sum, but they are still owed minimum notice once they pass 13 weeks' service, holiday pay and, after a year, protection against unfair selection. Charities that employ staff follow the same rules, and their governance paperwork sits in our templates for Irish charities and clubs. Be careful with an employee on maternity or other protective leave, because a termination during that leave is void under section 23 of the Maternity Protection Act 1994.

The letter opens with the employer's identity and, for a company, the registered office, CRO number and directors required on business letters by section 151 of the Companies Act 2014. It then sets out the business reason in the employer's own words and quotes the matching statutory situation, so that the link between the facts and section 7(2) is explicit.

• The letter first records the consultation meetings, the chance to propose alternatives and the alternatives actually examined.
• Where other employees do similar work, a selection paragraph names the group and the criteria used; otherwise it records that nobody doing similar work is being kept on.
• Notice is the longer of the contractual and statutory periods. The employee either works it, with paid time off to look for work after two years' service, or is released from duties on full pay.
• If the employee qualifies, the payment clause shows reckonable service, weekly pay and the resulting lump sum, then commits to the redundancy certificate.
• An optional ex gratia payment can be added on top of the statutory amount, or offered alone to an employee with shorter service.

Final pay covers wages, untaken annual leave and public holidays, reported to Revenue through payroll. Property must come back by a set date, and an appeal goes in writing, within a number of working days you choose, to a manager who took no part in the decision. For qualifying employees, the letter ends with the particulars that the notice of proposed dismissal must contain, such as the PAYE registered number and PPS number. Owners reorganising a company can pair it with our document templates for Irish businesses.

You start with the employee's length of service, because that answer decides whether the statutory notice wording, the lump sum, the time-off clause and the particulars block appear. The form then asks whether the employer is a company registered with the CRO, adds the CRO number and directors only where needed, and moves on to the signatory, the employee and the job.

The central step describes the redundancy: the business reason, the statutory situation that fits it and the dates of the consultation meetings. You then list the alternatives considered and say whether the employee was chosen from a group, which adds the pool and the criteria. Notice comes next, with the notice period and the last day of employment, followed by the figures for the statutory payment and any ex gratia amount. Company property, the appeal officer and the delivery method complete the form. Click Finish to generate the redundancy letter in Word and PDF. The full catalogue of legal templates for Ireland holds the rest of the range.

The most damaging mistake is a letter that announces a decision before any consultation took place. Employers hold one short meeting, hand over the letter the same afternoon, then struggle to show that alternatives were considered. An adjudication officer reads a redundancy letter against the dates in the file, so the consultation meetings it mentions must have happened. A close second is the pool of one: an employer picks the person it wanted to lose, ignores colleagues doing similar work and calls it a redundancy, which is exactly what section 6(3) targets.

Timing causes its own problems. For an employee with two years' service, the written notice must arrive at least two weeks before the date of dismissal, so a letter handed over on a Friday for a dismissal the following week breaches section 17 even if notice is paid. Some forget to cap weekly pay at the statutory ceiling. Others miscount reckonable service by including long sickness absences or lay-off in the last three years, which Schedule 3 excludes. Last, an appeal heard by the manager who chose the pool carries little weight. Keep the consultation notes, scoring sheets and proof of delivery together: the employee has 52 weeks to claim the lump sum and six months to claim unfair dismissal before the Workplace Relations Commission.