Time Off For Family Or Medical Emergencies
Published on: 06/08/2015
Article Authors The main content of this article was provided by the following authors.
Antoinette Vahey Partner, RDJ LLP Ireland
Antoinette Vahey Partner, RDJ LLP Ireland
Antoinette vahey 2022

Antoinette is a Partner, practicing as part of the Employment law team. She brings practical and strategic legal advice to clients in a range of areas such as wrongful and unfair dismissal; discrimination; absenteeism and work related stress; performance management; temporary and contingent workers; collective redundancies; restrictive covenants and severance agreements.

Antoinette represents clients on employment claims in the Workplace Relations Commission, Labour Court and High Court together with gender discrimination claims in the Circuit Court.

Having qualified as a mediator with the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution in 2013 (specialising in employment and workplace disputes), Antoinette is focused on expanding RDJ’s independent mediation offering to provide the best solution to our clients.

Antoinette is particularly interested in the areas of transfer of undertakings (TUPE ), Vetting and social media in the workplace and has spoken extensively at various events on legislative and other changes in those areas.

She also devises in-house training sessions and policies for clients in respect of grievance and disciplinary matters, dignity at work and social media.

What do you do if your employee looks for time off for family or medical emergencies? Are you obliged to pay employees for any days taken? Are you obliged to grant the time off? How do I handle it?

Antoinette Vahey writes:

In considering this matter, it will be necessary to look at the various types of leave that are available to employees, as well as considering whether there are any other measures which can be agreed between the employer and the employee.


1. Sick leave

In circumstances where the employee is undergoing a medical emergency then he or she will be entitled to take sick leave from employment. In general, an employee has no right to be paid while

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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 06/08/2015
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