Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Haleigh  Davidson

Board of Management St. Joseph's Secondary School Rush

Representatives

Mark Curran BL instructed by Catherine Kelly of  Mason Hayes & Curran

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 6 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1991

CA-00076933-001

30/10/2025

The Complainant is a teacher in the Respondent secondary school.

The Complainant was due to return to teaching at the start of the autumn school term after having taken an approved career break for the 2024/2025 school year and maternity leave for the 2023/2024 school year.  She has not returned to work and alleges that she is prevented from doing so.

The Respondent pays bi-weekly and this dispute concerns three pay periods. Two of these pay periods relate to an alleged unlawful deduction of illness benefit and together cover the 15th of September to 13th of October. The third pay period relates to the 13th to 24th of October when the Complainant salary was not paid as she was deemed absent without leave.

The Complainant alleges that the Respondent made unlawful deductions from her wages.

The Respondent disputes this and submits the Complainant has been absent without leave and is owed no wages. There was a period where she claimed sick leave and they made illness benefit deductions related to that period. 

Section 5 of the Payment of Wages act prohibits deductions from wages except in specific circumstances and defines a deduction as the payment of less than was properly payable to an employee on a specific occasion.

As such it is for the Complainant to establish that a payment was properly payable to her on a specific occasion but was not paid. If the Complainant succeeds in establishing this then it is for the Respondent to prove that any deductions were lawful.

It is not disputed that the Complainant was absent from the workplace during the relevant period. There is normally no entitlement for an employee to be paid except in exchange for carrying out work. There are some statutory exceptions such as notice or annual leave. There are also some contractual exceptions, depending on the employment relationship, such as sick leave or study leave. The Complainant has not identified any such leave entitlement. She requested and was refused administrative leave but by its nature this was discretionary and was not an entitlement.  In some cases, such as unlawful lay-off or suspension, an employee might establish a right to be paid where they have been prevented from working by the employer but those situations relate to the employer proactively sending the employee home or refusing them entry to the workplace, which is not alleged in this case.

The Complainant’s arguments related to the three pay periods which are the subject of this dispute are essentially the same. She did not attend work for the relevant weeks because she was prevented from returning to work and she submits she was entitled to paid full pay for those periods. While she initially claimed she was on sick leave for part of the period she later clarified that sick leave was not appropriate and that she was well enough to work but could not attend work due to the Respondent’s conduct. As such if the Complainant is entitled to full pay for the relevant periods the claim will succeed. If she was not entitled to any pay, then the deductions related to sick leave are irrelevant.

As outlined in more detail in ADJ-00060702 the Complainant was engaging with the Respondent over the course of 2025 to arrange her return to work. The Complainant was seeking a job share and a three-day week timetable from March. The Respondent was clear in managing expectations from the outset that a three-day timetable was unlikely. This engagement continued right up until just before the planned return to work on the 21st of August. At this point the Respondent had been entirely clear that three-days would not be facilitated and the Complainant had been equally clear that she could not work reduced hours and arrange full time childcare. The Complainant withdrew from the job-share and sought to return full time. The Respondent agreed to this.

The Complainant did not attend work from the 21st of August. Up until this point all indications were that she was returning to work and she identified no barriers preventing her return other than childcare concerns. The Complainant then began writing to the Respondent and other parties indicating she could not attend work for a variety of reasons including that she needed a health and safety statement and access to internal systems first. She also generally alleged that the Respondent needed to establish that the workplace was a safe place for her to return to before she would return. She outlined that she could not report to key people as a result of bullying behaviour and the WRC complaints she had submitted. The Respondent engaged with her and sent her the grievance policy, further IT access information and the health and safety statements. 

On the basis of the evidence available to me do not conclude that the Complainant was prevented from attending work by the Respondent. If she had issues accessing systems or the Respondent’s safety statement she could have attended in person to obtain the relevant information. If she had complaints about the conduct of any colleague she could submit a grievance in line with the relevant policy which would afford the Respondent the opportunity to investigate any claims made. If any employee submits a complaint, either internally via a policy or externally via a WRC complaint, it does not create any entitlement to paid leave while those complaints are being resolved.

In light of the above findings I do not conclude that complaint relates to wages which were properly payable to the Complainant.

The complaint is not well founded.