Domestic violence leave and force majeure leave in Ireland

Three kinds of short leave sit together in this guide because people search for them together: force majeure leave for a sudden family illness or injury, domestic violence leave, and the compassionate or bereavement leave that people expect to find in the law and do not. The first two are statutory and paid by your employer. The third is contractual, and what you get depends on your employer.

The law is the Parental Leave Acts 1998 to 2023 for force majeure leave and the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 for domestic violence leave.

Force majeure leave: the entitlement in one table

When force majeure leave applies

Force majeure leave is for the emergency you could not plan for. The Act's test has three parts, and all three must be met:

1. Urgent family reasons. The leave is for an injury to, or the illness of, a person on the Act's list.
2. A close family member. The list is your child or adopted child, your spouse, civil partner or cohabitant, your parent or grandparent, your brother or sister, and a person to whom you have a duty of care or who depends on you domestically.
3. Your immediate presence is indispensable. You had to be there, at the hospital, the school or the home, and nobody else could reasonably have taken your place at that moment.

Typical examples are a child taken to hospital, a parent who collapses at home, or a partner in a car accident. The leave covers the day or days of the emergency itself. It is not for the planned appointment the following week, the convalescence afterwards, or the childcare gap when a crèche closes, because those are not sudden and your presence, while helpful, is not indispensable in the Act's sense.

The WRC has heard many disputes about whether a particular absence qualified. The decisions turn on the facts of the day, and a reader's own situation may or may not fit; what adjudicators have accepted and rejected can be read on the WRC decisions search. The acronyms used here are explained in the glossary.

The three days and the five days

You have up to three days in any period of 12 consecutive months, and up to five days in any period of 36 consecutive months. Both limits run on a rolling basis from each day taken, not on a calendar year. So if you took three days in the spring, you cannot take another until a full 12 months after the first of them, and over any three-year span the total cannot pass five.

A part of a day counts as a whole day. Leaving work at lunchtime to go to the hospital uses one of your days.

The leave planner keeps a rolling count: enter the dates of the days you have taken and it tells you how many remain under each limit and when the next one frees up.

How to take it and how it is paid

There is no advance notice, because the point of the leave is that the event was unforeseen. Tell the employer as soon as you can on the day, and then confirm it in writing as soon as reasonably practicable afterwards, stating the date or dates, the name of the person, their relationship to you, and the nature of the emergency. The employer can ask for this written confirmation and the Act requires you to give it.

The days are paid at your normal pay, by the employer. There is no Department benefit involved. The leave does not reduce your annual leave or any other statutory leave, and you are treated as if you had been at work for every purpose.

An employer that refuses to pay for a day that met the test, or treats a qualifying absence as unauthorised, can be the subject of a complaint to the WRC under the Parental Leave Acts within six months of the refusal, extendable to twelve for reasonable cause. Compensation of up to 20 weeks' pay is possible under the Act; what adjudicators have awarded in practice is on /wrc/awards. The process is in how to make a WRC complaint.

When it is not force majeure

Because the leave is short and paid, the WRC is strict about the test. Absences that have been held not to qualify include a planned hospital appointment, a child's ordinary minor illness where another carer was available, an illness that had been continuing for some days, and bereavement, on the reasoning that the illness or injury has ended with the death. Each decision turns on its own facts, and a different set of facts may be decided differently.

For the days that follow an emergency, the options are medical care leave, which gives five unpaid days a year for serious medical care of a family member, annual leave by agreement, unpaid leave by agreement, or, for a long illness, carer's leave.

Domestic violence leave: the entitlement in one table

What domestic violence leave is for

The Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 introduced domestic violence leave so that an employee does not have to choose between their job and the steps needed to get safe. The leave can be used to seek medical attention, to get help from a domestic violence support service, to obtain counselling, to relocate or seek new accommodation, to get an order under the Domestic Violence Act 2018, to attend court, to seek legal or financial advice, or to help a relevant person do any of those things.

A relevant person is your spouse, civil partner or cohabitant, your child, a person who lives with you, or a person you are in an intimate relationship with. The Act's definition of domestic violence includes physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse and coercive control, and it does not matter whether the abuse is current or historic.

How domestic violence leave works

The five days can be taken as whole days or part days, together or separately, in any period of 12 consecutive months. There is no minimum service, and the leave is paid by the employer. The Act leaves the rate of pay to regulations, which set it as the employee's normal daily pay; check the regulations if your payslip shows something different.

You do not have to give notice in advance, because the need may arise suddenly, and the employer cannot ask for proof of the domestic violence. You should confirm the leave to the employer in writing as soon as reasonably practicable, stating the dates taken and that the leave is domestic violence leave. The written confirmation does not need to describe what happened.

The employer must keep the request and the reason confidential, and the Act requires employers to protect the employee's privacy in how the leave is recorded. Many employers have a domestic violence policy that names a contact person.

Taking the leave cannot be held against you. Your service continues, you return to the same job, and penalising you for taking it, or dismissing you for it, can be referred to the WRC within six months. Dismissal for exercising a statutory right is one of the grounds on which the usual 12 months' service for an unfair dismissal claim does not apply; see unfair dismissal in Ireland.

If you are in immediate danger, ring 999 or 112. Nothing in the Act stops you from also using sick leave, annual leave or unpaid leave, or your employer from offering more.

Compassionate leave and bereavement: what the law does not give

There is no statutory compassionate leave or bereavement leave in Ireland. The Parental Leave Acts, the Work Life Balance Act and the Organisation of Working Time Act are silent on it. What you have comes from one of three places:

• Your contract or the staff handbook. Most employers give a number of paid days for the death of a close family member, commonly three to five, with fewer days or unpaid leave for a wider circle. Public-sector circulars set their own scales; see civil and public service and HSE staff.
• A collective agreement. Where a union has negotiated bereavement leave, it binds the employer as a term of your contract.
• Custom and practice. Where an employer has consistently given compassionate leave for years, that practice may have become a term of the contract even if nothing is written down.

If none of those applies, the options are annual leave, unpaid leave by agreement, or sick leave with a certificate where grief has made you unfit for work. Force majeure leave does not cover bereavement, although the sudden illness or injury that preceded a death may have qualified on the day it happened.

A dispute about contractual compassionate leave is a contract matter, not a statutory one, so the WRC route is under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 if paid days were withheld, or an industrial relations referral where the claim is about the policy itself. The six-month clock runs from the deduction or the refusal.

The three leaves side by side

Where this leaves you

Force majeure leave is three paid days in 12 months and five in 36, for a sudden injury or illness of a close family member where your presence was indispensable, confirmed in writing afterwards. Domestic violence leave is five paid days a year, with no proof required and a duty of confidentiality on the employer. Compassionate leave is whatever your contract, handbook or collective agreement provides, and nothing in statute.

The leave planner keeps the rolling count of your force majeure days under both limits, so that you know before you ring in whether the day will be paid under the Act, and it shows where medical care leave or carer's leave would take over for the days that follow.