Appealing a WRC decision to the Labour Court: the 42 days and the re-hearing

The Labour Court is where a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) decision goes when one side does not accept it. It is not a court in the ordinary sense: nobody wears a gown, there are no legal costs, and the three people who hear your case include a worker member and an employer member as well as a chair. But it is the end of the road for the facts. After the Labour Court, the only appeal is to the High Court on a point of law.

This guide explains the 42-day limit, the form, the one fee that exists, what a full re-hearing means, how the Labour Court runs a hearing, and what happened to the Employment Appeals Tribunal, which many people still search for.

The 42 days

Either party can appeal a WRC adjudication decision to the Labour Court within 42 days of the date of the decision. The 42 days count from the date printed on the decision, not from the day you read it, received it or understood it. The Labour Court can accept a late appeal only where exceptional circumstances prevented it being lodged in time, and the bar is high: pressure of work, holidays or waiting for advice are rarely enough on their own.

Six weeks sounds long. It is not. A decision issued on a Friday before a bank holiday, read the following week, considered for a fortnight and then sent to a union or solicitor can be out of time before anyone has filled in a form. Count the days the day the decision arrives, and the deadline checker will do the counting for you.

If you are the one who was successful at the WRC, the same 42 days run for the employer. Until they pass, the decision is not final.

The form, and the one fee

An appeal is lodged on the Labour Court's own appeal form, available on the Court's website, with a copy of the WRC decision attached. The form asks which complaint reference numbers you are appealing and, briefly, why. You can appeal all of the complaints in an ADJ file or only some of them.

There is no fee, with one exception: a €300 fee is payable where the person appealing did not attend the WRC hearing without good cause. The fee exists to stop a party skipping the WRC hearing and treating the Labour Court as the first hearing. If you attended, or had a good reason not to, no fee is payable. If the Court later finds that you did have good cause, the fee is refunded.

No costs are awarded at the Labour Court, whichever way the determination goes. If you bring a solicitor or a barrister, you pay them; if a union represents you, it does so at no charge.

A full re-hearing

The Labour Court does not review the adjudicator's decision for mistakes. It hears the case again from the start, as if the WRC hearing had not happened. Both sides give their evidence again, witnesses are called again, documents are produced again, and the Court reaches its own view of the facts and the law. Lawyers call this a hearing de novo.

Three things follow from that.

• The award can go either way. A complainant who appeals a low award can end up with a higher one, a lower one or none; an employer who appeals can find the award increased. The Court is not bound by what the adjudicator found.
• You can improve your case. Evidence that was missing at the WRC, a witness who was not called, a job search record that was thin: all of it can be put right for the Labour Court. Equally, the employer can repair the gaps the adjudicator noticed in its case.
• It is a second full hearing, with the time and stress that brings. Many appeals settle before the hearing for exactly that reason, and the mediation guide explains the thinking that applies at this stage too.

How the Labour Court runs a hearing

The division

The Court sits in divisions of three: a chair (the chairman or a deputy chairman) and two ordinary members, one nominated from the employer side and one from the worker side. All three hear the case and the determination is the Court's, not the chair's alone. The members are not representatives of the parties and do not advocate for either.

Submissions

Under the Court's rules each side sends a written submission and the documents it relies on in advance, within the period the Court sets, and copies go to the other side. The Court reads them before the hearing and expects the parties to have read each other's. A submission to the Labour Court is a more formal document than a WRC form: it should set out the facts in order, the legal basis, the loss claimed and the documents, numbered. The case file builder produces the ordered bundle both bodies expect.

The hearing

Hearings are generally held in public, in the Court's rooms in Dublin or at a regional venue, and some are held by video. Evidence is given on oath or affirmation and witnesses are cross-examined. The chair runs the hearing and the two members ask questions. In an unfair dismissal case the employer goes first, carrying the burden of showing the dismissal was fair; in a constructive dismissal case the employee goes first; in an equality case the employee first shows facts from which discrimination may be inferred and the burden then moves to the employer. The WRC hearing guide describes the mechanics, and they are much the same.

The determination

The Court does not decide on the day. A written determination is issued some weeks later, with full reasons, and published on the Court's website with a reference number and, in most cases, the parties' names. The determination replaces the WRC decision. If it orders the employer to pay or to do something, the same enforcement route applies: the District Court can order compliance and treat compensation as a judgment debt.

Labour Court determinations are read closely by adjudicators, solicitors and union officials because they set out the Court's view of how an Act should be applied. If you are researching cases like yours, Labour Court determinations under your Act are often more useful than individual WRC decisions, and the decisions guide explains how to read both.

The appeal to the High Court on a point of law

A Labour Court determination under the employment Acts can be appealed to the High Court on a point of law only. That means the High Court will not re-hear the facts or substitute its own view of the evidence; it looks only at whether the Labour Court applied the law correctly. The Workplace Relations Act 2015 gives a fixed period of 42 days from the determination for this appeal too, and it is a court case in the ordinary sense, with costs, pleadings and, for almost everyone, a solicitor and counsel. Very few employment cases go this far, and the ones that do usually turn on a question the Acts have not settled before.

The Employment Appeals Tribunal is gone

If you search "employment appeals tribunal ireland" you will find a great deal of material, most of it describing a system that no longer exists. Until 2015 employment disputes were spread across several bodies: the Rights Commissioner Service and the Equality Tribunal at first instance, the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) hearing unfair dismissal, notice and redundancy cases and appeals from rights commissioners, the Labour Relations Commission for industrial relations, and the Labour Court for some appeals.

The Workplace Relations Act 2015 merged the first-instance bodies into the WRC and made the Labour Court the single appeal body for employment rights. From 1 October 2015 all new complaints went to the WRC and all appeals from the WRC went to the Labour Court. The EAT continued only to finish the cases already before it, and it has not taken any new case since. Old EAT determinations are still cited occasionally for the way they interpreted the Unfair Dismissals Acts, but the procedure they describe, including the two-tier appeal route, is history.

So, in 2026: complaint to the WRC, appeal to the Labour Court within 42 days, and a point of law to the High Court. Nothing else.

Is an appeal worth it?

Nobody can answer that for you, but these are the questions a union official or solicitor would ask:

• Did the adjudicator get a fact wrong that the documents can put right, or did they simply prefer the other side's witness? A re-hearing helps with the first and not much with the second.
• Is the gap between the award and the realistic value of the case large enough to justify months more and a second hearing? The awards register helps you judge the realistic value.
• If the employer is appealing, do you have the evidence to defend the award, and would you accept a settlement that preserves most of it?
• Would a published Labour Court determination with your name on it matter to you, for better or worse?

The Labour Court received a steady flow of appeals as the WRC's own caseload rose: 10,559 applications to the WRC in 2025, up 44%. A Labour Court hearing date is some months away from lodging, and the time limit for the appeal does not wait for you to decide.

Where this leaves you

The 42 days are the whole question this week. Put the date on the decision into the WRC deadline checker and it gives you the last day to lodge, for your appeal or to know when the employer's window closes.

If you are in a union, ring them first: unions run Labour Court appeals for members at no charge and know the Court's rules on submissions. How unions work at the WRC and the Labour Court. If you are not in a union, an appeal is the stage at which a solicitor most often earns the fee, because the hearing is more formal and the employer is more likely to be represented; the solicitor guide sets out what that costs.