Annual Leave Request Form Ireland (Organisation of Working Time Act 1997)

Legally, an annual leave request form is an internal workplace document rather than a contract. It does not create the right to holidays, because that right comes from statute and from the employee's contract of employment. What it does is fix the facts: who is asking, for which days, and how the request fits within the year's entitlement. The bottom half then records the employer's decision and who made it, with a date. When a disagreement reaches the Workplace Relations Commission, the first question is usually whether the leave was approved and when, and an email chain is a poor witness.

People often confuse the form with a holiday booking in a rostering app. An app shows blocked-out days, rarely the consultation, the reason for a refusal or the consent to carry days forward. It also differs from statutory notices such as a parent's leave notice, which carry their own notice periods under separate Acts. Annual leave has no employee notice period written into the 1997 Act. The timing is the employer's call, which is why a signed record of the request and the reply is worth keeping.

Sections 19 and 20 of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, as amended by the Workplace Relations Act 2015, hold the core rules. Under section 19(1), an employee earns the greatest of three measures: 4 working weeks in a leave year with at least 1,365 hours worked, one-third of a working week for each month with at least 117 hours worked, or 8 per cent of hours worked, capped at 4 working weeks. A "working week" means the number of days the employee usually works, so the 4-week cap for a three-day-week employee is 12 days rather than 20. Certified sick days count as days worked for accrual under section 19(1A).

The employer decides when leave is taken under section 20(1), having regard to work requirements, but subject to two duties. The employer must take into account the employee's need to reconcile work and family responsibilities and the opportunities for rest available to them, and it must consult the employee, or their trade union, not later than one month before the leave is due to begin. Leave is granted within the leave year, which under section 2 starts on 1 April. With the employee's consent it can run into the six months after that year ends, and certified illness extends the window to 15 months. Holiday pay is paid in advance at the normal weekly rate under section 20(2), and section 21 deals separately with public holidays.

For a plain summary, see the WRC guidance on annual leave entitlement and accrual. Employers also carry a records duty: section 25 requires working time records, including leave, to be kept for at least three years. Our employment contracts and HR templates for Irish employers cover the written terms behind this form.

A staff member planning a summer fortnight who wants a written yes before booking flights is the everyday case. A form submitted in March for August dates gives the manager time to plan cover. Retail and hospitality employers use it before Christmas, when several people want the same week; the refusal section then records that the decision concerned timing only and that the employer will consult on alternative dates. New starters are a quieter use. Someone who joins in October accrues leave month by month, so the entitlement line should show the pro rata figure under section 19(1)(b) or (c), not a full 20 days. Charities and clubs that employ staff often use it as their leave register (see our nonprofit governance templates for Irish organisations).

Carry-over is the other trigger. An employee who could not use all their days before 31 March and wants to take them in May needs the consent recorded, since carried-over leave has to be taken within six months of the end of the year it relates to. Long periods of sick leave are the edge case that catches employers out: certified illness lets the leave roll forward for 15 months, and an untidy record makes it hard to show which year's days were used. For other absences, such as parent's leave, carer's leave or sick leave, the Irish leave request and notice templates cover the statutory notices that this form does not replace.

Our template opens by identifying the employer and the employee and defining "the Employer", "the Employee" and "the Act", so the rest of the page reads cleanly. The request section lists the first and last day of leave, the number of working days requested and the first day back. A short paragraph explains that rest days and public holidays in the period are not counted, which heads off the usual arithmetic dispute.

Entitlement comes next: the form records the leave year, the total entitlement, days already taken or booked and the balance remaining after the request. If the employee is using carried-over days, a separate clause states how many, confirms the employee's consent and sets out the six-month and 15-month limits from section 20(1)(c). The three statutory calculation methods from section 19 are restated too, so a part-time employee can check the figure against the law. A cover and handover section follows.

Before signing, the employee confirms a declaration that recites the section 20(1) consultation rule and the section 19(2) rule on illness during leave, with the date of the request. The decision section changes with the answer you select: a blank tick-box block for the employer to complete by hand, an approval, an approval for different dates with the employee's agreement, or a refusal with the reason and a commitment to consult the employee on alternative dates. Closing notes cover pay in advance, the unbroken two-week period under section 19(3), the three-year retention rule and data protection under the Data Protection Acts 1988 to 2018. Contracts and policies for small companies in Ireland sit in the same library.

You start with the employer's name and address, then the employee's full name and job title. The next screen takes the leave dates, the number of working days and the return date; enter working days only, leaving out rest days and public holidays. The entitlement screen asks for the leave year as your employer runs it and the figures behind the balance. The following screen asks whether any of the days come from last year: answer yes and a field appears for the number of days, while the matching clause appears in the preview.

After the cover arrangements and the date of the request, you choose how the decision section should look. An employee submitting the form leaves it blank, and the document prints a tick-box block for the manager to sign. An employer recording an answer picks approval, approval for other dates or refusal, and the form asks only for what that answer needs, then for the person deciding. Each answer updates the document on the right, and Finish produces the final version. The same wizard runs every one of our Irish legal document templates.

Counting calendar days is the error we see most. A two-week holiday for someone on a four-day week uses eight days of leave rather than ten, and a bank holiday Monday inside the period should not come off the balance at all. Next comes a balance figure that deducts carried-over days from the current year, which makes the employee look overdrawn. Refusing leave with no reason and no alternative dates is risky, because the employer still has to grant the entitlement within the leave year.

Silence is another problem. A manager who says nothing until the week before the holiday has missed the one-month consultation point, and a late refusal at that stage is hard to defend. Paying holiday money in the next payroll run, rather than in advance, breaches section 20(2). Some employers also offer cash in place of unused statutory leave. Statutory annual leave cannot be bought out while employment continues; payment in lieu applies only when the employment ends with leave outstanding, under section 23.