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Employment Injunctions

Restraining dismissal pending fair procedures — the executive’s emergency remedy, and the employer’s defence.

For most employees, a dismissal becomes a claim after the fact. For some — typically senior, contractual, high-stakes — waiting means losing what no later award restores: the position, the process, the reputation, the share arrangements that vest with service. The employment injunction exists for exactly that gap: court intervention before the act completes — and it is one of the least-marketed, most decisive remedies in Irish employment law.

What the Remedy Does — and Its Honest Threshold

The classic case restrains a dismissal being executed in breach of contract or fair procedures — the disciplinary process the contract promises, skipped; the executive removed by ambush; the outcome visibly predetermined. Because such orders are mandatory in substance (they compel a relationship to continue), courts apply the demanding standard: a strong case likely to succeed, not merely a fair question — and this site states that plainly because clients deserve the real bar, not the brochure version. What relief looks like when granted: the dismissal or its implementation restrained pending trial, contractual procedures ordered to be followed, replacements restrained, and — often the commercial heart — salary and benefits continuing while the case runs, so the employee isn’t starved into surrender. What usually emerges from a strong application is a negotiated exit on proper terms: the injunction’s deepest function is restoring bargaining equality at the moment it matters. Where the dispute belongs instead in the statutory system, you’ll be told so — the firm’s employment practice at redundancysolicitors.ie covers that terrain, and honest triage between the routes is the first conversation’s job.

Both Chairs: the Executive and the Employer

For the employee: timing is everything — the remedy restrains what hasn’t completed, so the call belongs on the day the threat appears, with the contract, the correspondence and the chronology; and the undertaking as to damages is part of the honest decision, sized here by continuing-salary exposure rather than catastrophe. For the employer: the position is usually stronger than the panicked version — courts lean against compelling employment, the strong-case bar protects a process genuinely followed, and the vulnerabilities are procedural: the skipped contractual step, the predetermined look. The defensive moves: assemble the paper record immediately, weigh short holding undertakings against fighting an interim hearing on bad optics, and remediate the process even mid-dispute — often possible, often decisive. This practice brings and defends these applications; each side’s playbook sharpens the other, and either chair gets the realistic assessment in writing before anything is committed.

A Dismissal in Motion - Either Side of It?

The remedy expires with the act. One call today - contract, chronology, honest assessment - beats any number of calls after Friday.

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Employment Injunctions - FAQs

Sometimes - and the honest framing matters: Irish courts can restrain a dismissal, most classically where it’s being executed in breach of contractual or fair procedures - the disciplinary process ignored, the contractual terms bypassed, the executive removed without the process their contract promises. Because such orders are mandatory in substance (they compel a continuing relationship), courts apply the higher threshold: a STRONG case likely to succeed, not merely a fair question. What the remedy protects is process and position - it is not a general veto on ever being dismissed, and courts are frank about their reluctance to force unwilling parties together indefinitely. The realistic assessment - strong case or not, and what interim terms are achievable - is precisely the first conversation’s job, and it needs to happen before the dismissal completes, not after.