1 - Remote work
The first and only ruling awarding compensation to a worker for a breach of legislation which came into force in 2024 on the right to request remote work was published by the WRC in May this year.
Thomas Farrell, a recruiter at Salesforce, won €1,000 for his employer's failure to consider his request for remote work within the statutory deadline set out under the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023.
A public consultation on the implementation of the law - branded "toothless" by one source in the WRC last year - closed this month. A review of the implementation of legislation must be published by early March 2026.
Work-from-home arrangements are a point of dispute in a number of ongoing disability discrimination cases.
In June, a scientist at medical devices firm Abbott said the firm's insistence that she make a round-trip commute of four hours a day from Dublin to a county town in the midlands was discriminatory due to her "debilitating" endometriosis.
In the autumn, the WRC heard an equality claim by a veteran garda with asthma challenging the legality of an order that he go back on the beat during a winter Covid-19 surge after months of being allowed to work from home.
2 - Artificial Intelligence warning
In October, lawyers acting for Ryanair pointed to "phantom" legal rulings in a flight attendant’s legal filings to the WRC and suggested they had been generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
While the claimant, Fernando Oliveira, at first denied this, he later "acknowledged that he may have used AI".
The tribunal said the "phantom" citations were "egregious and an abuse of process".
A fortnight after the Ryanair ruling, the WRC published guidelines emphasising that parties before the tribunal "must take full responsibility" for everything they put into a legal submission - and that "AI tools" were not to be "relied upon as legal advice".
The following month, the tribunal noted in one case that a chef who admitted using ChatGPT to put together a statement seemed to have been "prompted by AI" to accuse his bosses of failing to act on a sexual harassment complaint.
The adjudicator concluded this was "ultimately a misrepresentation" as she rejected the complaint.
3 - Piercing decision
In May, a Transition Year student won €9,000 in an equality claim after challenging his school's uniform policy ban on "all body piercings except one small stud in each ear".
He had been punished after arriving to school at the start of term with a new piercing in the upper cartilage of his left ear and a silver stud through it.
"I think they know boys won't pierce the other ear because they'll be called gay," the student told the WRC.
4 - "A better life in Ireland"
"I was employed on the promise of €576 per week and [the] chance of a better life in Ireland. This [was] not true," one of the instructors told the Commission in her complaint.
The unidentified business is understood to be pursuing an appeal to the Labour Court.
5 - "A history of corruption"
A software salesman at a Cork-headquartered firm told the tribunal in September that his ex-boss approved a "crazy" €500,000 discount in an alleged "side deal" with a supplier with a "history of corruption".
The claimant, Ali Izzy, was sacked from his nearly €200,000-a-year job for "insubordination" by Solar Winds Software Europe DAC in 2024, and resorted to working as a food delivery driver after being left out of work, the tribunal heard.
His case is still being considered by the WRC.
6 - "Not once did I think I was being robbed"
Eight care workers from Zimbabwe gave evidence to the WRC in November they paid thousands of euro each to a recruiter to secure Irish work permits – but never got the jobs they had been promised.
"Not once did I think I was being robbed," one of the workers told the tribunal. The company disputes their claims, with a ninth former employee set to testify in the New Year.
7 - "I don’t feel like going into work today"
Barry O’Brien-Lynch said he was "a bit pissed off" with his boss, Navan Co Meath auctioneer Ed Reilly. Adjudicator David James Murphy concluded the claimant was not fired bur resigned voluntarily.
8 - Trans rights claims heard
The patient, Paige Behan, had brought a statutory complaint against the hospital’s board alleging that she was discriminated against in breach of the Equal Status Act 2000, which was resolved by agreement and the complaint withdrawn.
In a separate case in September, an unidentified youth organisation was ordered to pay €5,000 to a transgender volunteer excluded from working with younger children because of his gender identity.
The tribunal concluded the claimant was subjected to less favourable treatment "solely on the grounds of his transgender identity" when a motion was passed to limit his involvement.
9 - "They stopped paying us, so we stopped working"
Two Dublin steakhouses which closed abruptly last year were hit with multiple orders for unpaid wages and statutory entitlements claimed by ex-staff, some with decades of service.
Its owner, John Shanahan, had promised to go to America and "resolve matters" after staff were left unpaid in October, its sommelier told the WRC - adding that he "never heard from Mr Shanahan again", the tribunal noted.
As of April this year, six ex-staff of Browne’s Steakhouse in Blanchardstown had secured orders for over €100,000 against their ex-employer.
"They stopped paying us, so we stopped working," one of the workers said.
10 - Aer Lingus whistleblower turbulence
In the autumn, the WRC started hearing evidence in two separate cases brought by Aer Lingus pilots alleging that they have been subjected to penalisation linked to making protected disclosures.
Tom O'Riordan was sacked as a jet captain after staging a protest in uniform while out on sick leave in 2024, after he claims he was exposed to "toxic fumes" while in command of a jet two years ago.
Declan McCabe says his demotion from training captain to first officer last year over not reporting what he judged to be a "non-event" was "retribution" from a senior manager.
Aer Lingus denies both claims. The pilots' cases are due to continue in 2026 - when it is understood that a third senior pilot at the flag carrier will be launching a protected disclosures claim.
11 - High times
At a hearing in January a safety manager for the company, Weltec Engineering Ltd, said the "attitude" the worker Aran Burrows displayed in the voice notes meant he was not prepared to have him on site - but accepted he did not take everything the worker said literally.
The tribunal heard the voice note referring to "cocaine use, smoking joints at work, b**ches and h*es at work, and using equipment at height" was apparently recorded by the complainant and sent to a former health and safety officer while he had a company phone.
"Saying 'We have h*es up here'; unless they’re badged or inducted by Intel, he might have a difficult time getting them in," the manager said.
10 - 'Party to a fraud on the State’
In November, former Astronomy Ireland manager Sonya Martin was awarded nearly €11,000 in compensation for employment rights breaches, including constructive dismissal.
Four members of the club’s management committee, including well-known space pundit David Moore, were held personally liable by the WRC in the case. Mr Moore claimed the club had been "libelled" in the course of proceedings.
11 - AWOL in Ukraine
In January, the WRC heard a Mountjoy prison officer wounded in action after going AWOL to fight in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion was sacked after a manager saw him being interviewed on TV from his hospital bed.
Brian Meagher, a former soldier in the Irish Defence Forces, denied abandoning his employment, and said he had paid a substantial sum to a colleague to cover his shifts - a common practice in the Prison Service, he told the WRC.
In August, the WRC ordered the IPS to put him back to work as a prison officer.
12 - Clubhouse trouble in the League of Ireland
The WRC concluded this was whistleblower penalisation linked to player welfare concerns raised by Mr Gartland.
The largest element of Mr Gartland's award was €37,000, nine months’ wages, for "reputational loss" due to what an adjudicator called the "rushed-out announcement" of the dismissal on social media by the club.
Dundalk FC was called back to the WRC again the same month for another unfair dismissal claim by ex-chief operations officer, Martin Connolly, which was conceded.
In July, Bohemians FC was ordered to pay a €26,000 maximum-jurisdiction award to former player and coach David Henderson after finding that he was subjected to a fabricated allegation of misconduct and "a sham redundancy carried out in a ruthless and dishonest manner".
It was after the club’s president admitted to the tribunal that a supposed "historic letter of complaint" referenced by the Gypsies’ director of football when Mr Henderson was dispensed with had, in fact, never existed.
13 - RTÉ told to "pony up"
Her trade union rep, Vivian Cullen of SIPTU, said RTÉ ought to "pony up" and pay the sum set out in the contract, but the WRC disagreed.
In July, the WRC ruled for the first time that a supposed freelancer at the national broadcaster was actually an employee.
In a preliminary ruling, the tribunal found former Fair City photographer Beta Bajgart had standing to pursue rights claims against RTÉ as an employee.
In September, broadcaster Colm Ó Mongáin testified in another alleged bogus self-employment claim brought by video editor Maebh Keary di Lucia, who told the WRC she was "misclassified" as an independent contractor for years.
She and Joey Kelly, another newsroom colleague pursuing a similar complaint, are awaiting decisions from the tribunal.
14 - "Work avoidance"
"Anything over 60 seconds is considered work avoidance," his former manager told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) at a hearing in March.
15 - "Damaging to the State"
The Department of Foreign Affairs’ secretary-general said the worker, Declan Cosgrave, had "exposed seven million citizens’ data in a way that is damaging to the State".
Mr Cosgrave denied any breach of the secure database system at a hearing last year.
