Redundancy Letters in Ireland: Legal Requirements Every Employer Must Meet

What counts as a genuine redundancy

Under Section 7 of the Redundancy Payments Act 1967, a redundancy must relate to the role, not the person. The Act recognises five genuine grounds: the employer has ceased (or intends to cease) the business; the business has ceased (or intends to cease) operating at that employee's place of work; the requirements of the business for employees to do that particular kind of work have ceased or diminished; the employer is replacing the employee with fewer people doing the work differently; or the work is going to be done in a different way the employee isn't qualified or trained for.

If you make a role redundant and then hire someone new into a substantially similar role shortly afterwards, that is strong evidence the redundancy wasn't genuine — and it is one of the most common grounds employees win unfair dismissal claims on.

Statutory notice periods

The Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973–2005 sets the minimum notice you must give, based on the employee's length of continuous service:

Calculating the statutory redundancy payment

An employee with at least 2 years' continuous service is entitled to a statutory redundancy payment of: 2 weeks' pay for every year of service, plus one additional week's pay. Weekly pay is capped at €600 gross for this calculation, even if the employee earns more. Since the employer rebate scheme was abolished in 2013, the employer pays the full statutory redundancy amount directly to the employee — there is no partial refund from the state.

The redundancy must be notified to the Department of Social Protection through its online redundancy payments system, and the employee should receive a written statement showing how the lump sum was calculated (a "RP50" style breakdown), even though the paper RP50 form itself is no longer the filing mechanism.

What the redundancy letter must include

• The specific genuine ground for redundancy (referencing the role/position, not the individual)
• Confirmation of the employee's last working day and the notice period being given (or payment in lieu of notice, if applicable and contractually allowed)
• The statutory redundancy lump sum calculation — years of service, weekly pay used, and total amount
• Any additional ex-gratia payment being offered, and whether it is conditional on signing a settlement agreement
• Details of accrued but untaken annual leave being paid out
• The employee's right to appeal the selection or process, and how to raise a complaint with the WRC if they believe the redundancy was not genuine

Selecting who is made redundant fairly

Where a redundancy affects one role among several similar ones, you need a fair, objective selection process — not a decision based on who you'd simply prefer to let go. Commonly used criteria include length of service (LIFO — last in, first out), skills and qualifications relevant to the business's ongoing needs, attendance and disciplinary record, and performance ratings, provided they were documented before the redundancy process began.

Selection criteria must never be based on, or have the effect of disproportionately impacting, any of the nine discriminatory grounds under the Employment Equality Acts — gender, civil status, family status, age, disability, race, sexual orientation, religion, or membership of the Traveller community. Selecting the employee currently on maternity leave or the oldest member of a team, for example, invites both an unfair dismissal claim and a discrimination claim.

Consultation before the decision is final

Best practice — and, for collective redundancies affecting a minimum number of employees within a 30-day period, a legal requirement under the Protection of Employment Act 1977 — is to consult with affected employees before finalising the decision: explain the business rationale, the selection criteria, and give them a genuine opportunity to respond or propose alternatives (such as redeployment) before the redundancy letter is issued.

If the employee challenges the redundancy

An employee who believes a redundancy was not genuine, was used to disguise an unfair dismissal, or involved unfair selection can bring a claim to the WRC — typically as an unfair dismissal claim rather than a redundancy dispute, since the redundancy itself is the alleged pretext. See our guide on filing a WRC complaint for how that process works from the employee's side, and keep your redundancy file (business rationale, selection matrix, consultation notes, and the letter itself) in case you need to defend the decision.