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Latest in Employment Law>Case Law>Scoil Dara v McCarthy [2012]
Scoil Dara v McCarthy [2012]
Published on: 09/05/2012
Issues Covered: Dismissal Contracts of Employment
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Background

The complainant in this case was employed for a total of six years under a series of fixed term contracts to replace an absent teacher who was on leave for a variety of legitimate reasons between 2005 and 2011. The absent teacher taught music in the respondent’s school and the complainant was employed to take up those teaching duties. However, although she taught all the music classes that the absent teacher had done, she was also assigned other classes beyond these. This included ten class periods of Religious Education in 2005/2006, four class periods of Health Education in 2008/2009, two periods of SPHE in 2008/2009 and finally three periods of Geography in 2009/2010. The absent teacher returned to her job at the start of the 2011 school year and the complainant’s contract was not renewed. 

In terms of her claim, the complainant submitted that by September 2009, the respondent had employed her on a series of two or more fixed-term contracts for a period exceeding four years and that she should thus have been entitled to a contract of indefinite duration, had her employer not had an objective grounds for offering further fixed-term contracts beyond this limit. She submitted that the defence of objective justification was lost to the respondent school when she was assigned the three Geography classes in 2009/2010, as the absent teacher had never taught nor was qualified to teach Geography. This broke the connection between herself and the absent teacher she was employed to replace, with these classes being assigned to anther fixed term contract after the complainant’s employment terminated.

The respondent gave evidence that a full complement of teaching hours involved 34 class periods per week. Thus, although all of the absent teacher’s music classes were assigned to the complainant, these hours varied and it was necessary to assign her class periods in other subjects to make up the difference. The three Geography periods allocated in 2009/2010 arose from a reallocation of duties amongst the existing cohort of teachers and were not additional or extra classes that could be assigned when her contract to replace the absent teacher came to an end. The school submitted that the complainant was aware at all times of the fixed term nature of her contract and received a letter from the school each academic year setting out the details of her contract and the person she was replacing.

In rejecting the complainant’s claim, the Court found that the allocation of classes to the complainant closely followed that of the absent teacher and that the minor variations from year to year did not materially affect the primary purpose for which the complainant was employed. It concluded therefore that the allocation of three class periods of Geography in 2009/2010 did not materially change the purpose of her employment to replace the absent teacher and that the respondent was therefore entitled to maintain its defence of objective justification. Thus, the Rights Commissioner decision was upheld and the appeal failed.

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 09/05/2012
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