Contract of employment template Ireland: what has to be in it

An Irish contract of employment that contains the particulars in section 3 of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 discharges the statutory written statement as well, so you do not need two documents. To do that it must be signed and dated by or on behalf of the employer under section 3A, and the eleven section 3(1A) particulars must reach the employee within five days of starting.

The statutory core

The day-5 particulars are the parties' names, the employer's address in the State, the expected duration of a fixed-term contract, the remuneration with each component shown separately and the pay reference period for the National Minimum Wage Act 2000, the hours expected per day and per week, the tips policy where sections 4B to 4E of the Payment of Wages Act 1991 apply, the place of work, the nature of the work, the commencement date, the terms about hours including overtime, and the duration and conditions of any probationary period.

The one-month particulars in section 3(1) are what is left: registered employment agreements and collective agreements, the section 23 National Minimum Wage Act right to a statement of average hourly pay, the pay interval, paid leave, sick pay and pensions, notice, training entitlement, agency user undertakings, the extra disclosures for an unpredictable work pattern, and the social security institutions receiving the contributions.

Notice: two different rules for the two sides

The ladder in section 4(2) of the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973 binds the employer only:

Continuous service	Employer's minimum notice
Under 2 years	1 week
2 to under 5 years	2 weeks
5 to under 10 years	4 weeks
10 to under 15 years	6 weeks
15 years or more	8 weeks

Section 4(1) starts the duty only at thirteen weeks' continuous service. Below that, no statutory notice is owed at all.

What binds the employee is section 6: one week, flat, once there are thirteen weeks' service. It does not climb. Fifteen years in, the statutory floor on the employee is still one week — although a longer contractual period binds as an ordinary contract term, because section 4(5), which reads a short period up to the statutory minimum, is written against subsection (2) and protects the employee only.

Section 7(1) lets either side waive notice or accept payment in lieu. Section 8 preserves termination without notice for the other party's misconduct.

Working time

• Section 15(1) of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 caps working time at an average of 48 hours in each period of seven days, over a reference period of four months — six for the activities in Article 17(2.1) of the Directive, and up to twelve only under a collective agreement approved by the Labour Court under section 24.
• Section 11: eleven consecutive hours of rest in each twenty-four.
• Section 12: at least fifteen minutes after four and a half hours, and at least thirty minutes after six hours, the thirty being able to include the fifteen. Section 12(4) is the trap — a break at the end of the working day does not satisfy either.
• Section 13: twenty-four consecutive hours of rest in each seven days, immediately preceded by a daily rest period, or two such periods in the following seven days.
• Section 14(1): an employee required to work on a Sunday must be compensated by an allowance, an increased rate, paid time off or a combination — unless the fact of Sunday work has otherwise been taken into account in determining the pay. If you are relying on that exception, say in the contract what part of the rate is referable to it.

Annual leave has three measures, and the greater one wins

Section 19(1) gives the greater of: four working weeks where the employee works at least 1,365 hours in a leave year; one-third of a working week for each month in which at least 117 hours are worked; and 8 per cent of the hours worked, capped at four working weeks. Section 19(6) measures a working week by the days the employee usually works, so four weeks is twenty days on a five-day week and eight days on a two-day week.

Section 19(1A) counts a certified sick day as a day worked for that calculation, and section 19(2) stops a day of annual leave counting as leave where the employee is certified ill on it. Section 20(1)(c) allows leave to be taken in the leave year, within six months after it with the employee's consent, or within fifteen months after it where certified illness prevented it — and that last window cannot be contracted away.

There are ten public holidays, and one of them moves

The Second Schedule to the 1997 Act lists nine: Christmas Day, St. Stephen's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter Monday, the first Monday in May, June and August, the last Monday in October, and 1 January. The tenth was prescribed under paragraph 1(g) by regulation 4 of S.I. No. 50 of 2022: the first Monday in February. Regulation 5 is the part almost every handbook misses — in any year in which 1 February falls on a Friday, the public holiday is 1 February itself and not the first Monday.

Section 21(1) lets the employer choose between a paid day off on the day, a paid day off within a month, an extra day of annual leave and an extra day's pay. Section 21(3) removes that choice if the employee asks twenty-one days in advance and the employer does not answer fourteen days before. Section 21(4) disapplies the entitlement for a part-time employee who has not worked at least forty hours in the five weeks ending the day before the holiday.

Probation is capped

Section 6D(1) of the 1994 Act caps a probationary period at six months. Twelve is available for a public servant under section 6D(2), and for anyone else only under section 6D(3), on an exceptional basis and where the longer period is in the interest of the employee — the employee's interest, not the employer's. Section 6D(5) extends probation automatically for any absence on maternity, adoptive, parental, carer's, paternity, parent's or statutory sick leave. On a fixed-term contract section 6D is displaced by section 9A of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003, which requires proportionality to the expected duration and forbids a fresh probation on renewal for the same functions.

Two clauses that are void however you write them

Section 23 of the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 voids any provision purporting to restrict a protected disclosure. And section 14B of the Employment Equality Act 1998, in force since 20 November 2024, makes null and void any agreement or provision between employer and employee that would preclude a disclosure about discrimination, victimisation, harassment or sexual harassment. Draft the confidentiality clause with both carve-outs on its face.

Our contract of employment contains all of the above and blocks a probation, a break, a leave figure or an hourly rate the statutes do not permit. If you only need the statutory minimum, the statement of terms of employment is the shorter document.