My employer did not give me a contract: what the law in Ireland actually says

Your employer is not obliged to give you a signed contract. It is obliged to give you a written statement of terms under section 3 of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 — eleven particulars within five days of starting under section 3(1A), and the remainder within one month under section 3(1). If you have neither, you can complain to the Workplace Relations Commission, which can order up to four weeks' remuneration.

You still have a contract

The absence of paper does not mean the absence of a contract. A contract of employment exists from the moment you agreed to work and the employer agreed to pay you, and its terms are proved by whatever evidence there is: the job advertisement, the offer email, the roster, the payslips, and what has actually happened. The statement under section 3 is evidence of those terms, not the source of them.

When you can complain, and when you cannot

Two thresholds decide this, and they are in different subsections.

Section 7(1A)(a) provides that you cannot present a complaint about the section 3(1A) five-day statement unless you have been in the continuous service of the employer for more than one month. So in your first month there is nothing to bring, however plainly the deadline was missed.

Section 2(1) provides that the Act, other than section 3(1A), does not apply where you have less than four consecutive weeks' continuous service. So the one-month statement is not owed to someone who leaves inside four weeks. But section 2(5) disapplies that exemption where no guaranteed amount of remunerated work was predetermined before the employment started — which covers most casual and if-and-when arrangements.

There is one more, in section 7(1): you cannot complain if the employer has complied with a direction under section 6A given by an inspector in relation to the same contravention, or if such a direction has been given and the time for complying with it has not yet run out.

What the WRC can order

Under section 7(2) an adjudication officer may declare the complaint well founded, confirm the particulars in any statement given, alter or add to the statement to correct an inaccuracy or omission (and the corrected statement is then deemed to have been given to you), require the employer to give you a written statement containing specified particulars, and order compensation of such amount as is just and equitable, not exceeding four weeks' remuneration.

The time limit is the ordinary one under section 41 of the Workplace Relations Act 2015: six months from the contravention, extendable to twelve for reasonable cause.

It can also be a criminal offence

Section 6B(1), inserted by section 10 of the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2018, makes it an offence for an employer without reasonable cause to fail to provide the section 3(1A) statement within one month of the commencement of the employment. Section 6B(2) makes it an offence to give false or misleading information in it deliberately or recklessly. The penalty on summary conviction is a class A fine of up to €5,000 or twelve months' imprisonment, or both, and section 6B(4) reaches a director, manager or secretary who consented or connived. Proceedings are brought by the Commission, and section 6B(8) gives it twelve months from the date of the offence to do so.

Section 7(1A)(b) stops you bringing a WRC complaint about the same contravention if the employer has been prosecuted for it. The two routes are alternatives, not extras.

What you should ask for, in writing

Ask for the statement itself, and say which subsection you are relying on. That single sentence changes the tone of the reply. The eleven day-5 particulars are the parties' names, the employer's address in the State, the expected duration of a temporary or fixed-term contract, the remuneration with its component elements shown separately and the pay reference period, the hours expected per day and per week, the tips policy where it applies, 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.

Keep the request. Section 3(4) and section 3A require the statement to be signed and dated by or on behalf of the employer and, if sent electronically, to be accessible, storable and printable with the employer retaining proof of transmission or receipt. Section 3(5) requires the employer to keep a copy during your employment and for a year afterwards — so "we never had one" is itself a breach.

If you are the employer reading this

Give it today. The statement is not difficult, and the exposure is asymmetric: four weeks' pay at the WRC, a class A fine on prosecution, and — because section 5(1)(a) now requires any change in the particulars to be notified in writing not later than the day the change takes effect — a running obligation that a missing baseline document makes impossible to satisfy.

Our statement of terms of employment produces the day-5 and one-month parts in one signed document. If you want the full agreement rather than the statutory minimum, the contract of employment contains the same section 3 particulars and adds notice, leave, deductions and confidentiality.