Sick Leave Notification Ireland (Sick Leave Act 2022)

A phone call to a manager tells the employer you are not coming in. A sick leave notification records when the incapacity began, whether you expect to return on a known date, whether a medical certificate is enclosed or will follow, and which payment you are claiming. Section 5(1) of the Act defines a statutory sick leave day as a day on which you would ordinarily work but are incapable of doing so because of illness or injury, and each such day, within the yearly limit, carries a statutory sick leave payment under section 7. The letter does not ask permission, because the entitlement comes from the statute, and it does not need to name your illness. Most absence policies also require a call before your shift.

It is easily confused with other paperwork. A medical certificate is signed by your doctor; the notification is your own letter, which encloses or promises it. Carer's leave is a long unpaid absence to care for someone else and parental leave is time off to care for a child; the leave request letters for Irish employees deal with those. Illness Benefit is a weekly payment from the Department of Social Protection, not a form of leave.

The Sick Leave Act 2022 came into operation on 1 January 2023 and gave employees in Ireland a statutory right to paid sick days for the first time. Section 5(2) set the number at three days a year and allowed the Minister to raise it by order under section 6. The Sick Leave Act 2022 (Increase of Statutory Sick Leave Days) Order 2024 (S.I. No. 10 of 2024) raised it to up to and including 5 days a year. The days may be consecutive or not (section 5(3)). Payment is fixed by the Sick Leave Act 2022 (Prescribed daily rate of payment) Regulations 2022 (S.I. No. 607 of 2022): 70% of your normal pay for the day, subject to a daily maximum, with regular bonuses counted and overtime and commission left out. The Workplace Relations Commission publishes a short plain-English guide to statutory sick leave entitlements.

Two conditions control entitlement. You need 13 weeks' continuous service with the employer (section 5(5)), and re-employment within 26 weeks keeps earlier service (section 5(7)). For each day, you must provide a medical certificate signed by a registered medical practitioner stating that you are unable to work (section 5(9)), in English or Irish. A contractual provision as favourable or more favourable applies in substitution for the statutory entitlement (section 8), and the Act's obligations fall away where an employer's scheme is, as a whole, more favourable (section 9). During statutory sick leave you are treated as not absent and the days do not count against annual leave (section 11). Penalisation is prohibited (section 12), employers keep records for four years (section 13), and complaints go to the WRC (section 14).

The everyday case is a short illness that runs past a day or two. You phoned in on Monday, the GP signed you off for the week, and you want the absence and your claim on paper before payroll closes. A sick leave notification does that in a page. It matters most where payroll sits with a central HR team that never heard the phone call, or where a new manager is unsure whether the statutory scheme applies.

Longer absences are the second trigger. When the return date is uncertain, the letter says so and commits you to further certificates, which avoids the drift into "unauthorised absence" that turns a health problem into a disciplinary one. Employees with company sick pay use it to claim under that scheme, while reminding the employer that a less favourable scheme is read up to the statutory minimum. New starters with fewer than 13 weeks' service use it to report the absence and ask whether any contractual payment applies. If your contract says nothing about sick pay, the Irish employment contracts and HR letters show how such terms are usually written.

One edge case: company directors who are not employees of their own company, and sole traders, fall outside the Act entirely, and the business documents for Irish companies cover their own contracts and company paperwork instead.

The letter opens with the parties, a delivery line (email, by hand or registered post) and a subject line naming the Sick Leave Act 2022. The body follows the order in which an HR officer checks a claim.

• First comes the absence itself: the date you became unable to work, and either an expected return date or a statement that it is not yet known, with a promise of further certificates.
• Your medical certificate is either enclosed or promised as soon as you obtain it. No diagnosis is ever asked for.
• A claim paragraph changes with your answers. With 13 weeks' service and no company scheme, it claims statutory sick leave for each day you would ordinarily work, up to the days still available this year, and states the rate with its source; with a company scheme, it claims under that scheme and invokes section 8(2) if the scheme falls short.
• Because Illness Benefit may follow, every version notes the rules of section 40 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 and asks the employer to answer the Department.

Where you have 13 weeks' service, the closing paragraphs restate your protection under sections 11 and 12 and ask for confirmation of the days recorded as statutory sick leave. Every version requests confidentiality for health information, asks for an acknowledgment and reserves your rights without threatening proceedings.

You start with your own details: name, home address, job title and a personal phone number or email you will check while off work. The next screen asks for the employer's name and address and the person you are writing to, usually your line manager. The preview on the right fills in as you type.

The absence screen does most of the legal work. You give the first day you could not work, say whether you know your return date (the date field disappears if you choose "No, not yet") and indicate whether the certificate is enclosed or will follow. The help text explains the carry-over rule (section 5(4A)): statutory sick leave does not apply if, on your last normal working day before the absence, you were already on statutory sick leave from the previous calendar year or on sick leave covered by Illness or Injury Benefit.

Two short questions then decide the claim paragraph: whether you have 13 weeks' continuous service, answered as at the first day of absence, and whether your contract or workplace provides its own sick pay. The last questions cover the delivery method and the date, followed by a review screen. Use Next and Back to move between screens, then Finish to generate the letter, which you sign and send, with the certificate if you have it.

The most common error is sending the letter without the certificate and never following up. The Act ties payment to a certificate for each statutory sick leave day, so the employer can hold payment back until it arrives. If the GP appointment is a few days away, choose "will follow" and diarise it. The second mistake is volunteering medical detail. The certificate only has to say that you are unable to work, and a letter that describes symptoms hands sensitive information to people who do not need it.

Miscounting service is the third. People who left and came back within 26 weeks often assume they start from zero, when section 5(7) keeps the earlier service. A fourth trap is assuming that company sick pay adds to the statutory scheme. A contractual scheme that is at least as favourable replaces the statutory entitlement (section 8(1)), and you cannot be paid twice for the same day. Finally, many employees wait too long: a complaint about statutory sick leave must normally reach the WRC within six months, or up to twelve for reasonable cause, and an adjudication officer can award up to four weeks' remuneration. For other paperwork a long illness can prompt, such as a will, see the Irish personal legal documents.