It follows a recent court case where an employee was awarded €10,000 for not being allowed to take his full annual leave.
The COO of an Irish employment law specialist firm has stated that employers in Ireland must find ways to give their employees their entitled annual leave, or they'll leave themselves open to legal ramifications.
The warning comes off the back of report (as per the
Irish Independent) that a hospital porter awarded €10,000 in compensation after it was discovered that the HSE had failed to allow him to take his full annual leave over the course of a decade.
In reaction to the ruling, Moira Grassick, the COO at Irish employment law specialists
Peninsula Ireland said:
"Employers should be aware that there is a risk that comes with not regularly and annually tracking if employees are taking all their leave. The claim here was that the employer placed the requirement on the employee to find suitable cover for his role which impacted them accessing their right to leave.
"We see cases like these all the time and situations like this are more common than you would expect. We would always advise employers to monitor and track employees that have left over leave. This includes keeping track to make sure staff are taking leave throughout the year so as to prevent leave being hoarded as it should not be carried forward.
"This case was made worse by the employee being informed by his manager that there was ‘nothing he could do' about the situation. It is up to employers to ensure that staff can access their legal entitlement to leave and it should receive as much attention as the taking of statutory breaks and hours of work. Fail to do so and they risk facing a claim similar to this one."
