Fixed-Term Contract Not Renewed While Pregnant

The fixed-term contract that renewed every year without ceremony — until the year of the announcement. No dismissal letter, no redundancy process, nothing to point at: the contract simply expired. It is the tidiest-looking exit in the pregnancy-discrimination catalogue, and the law was not designed by people who found it persuasive: the renewal decision is a decision, and pregnancy cannot lawfully count in it.

The Law Looks Behind the Expiry

European authority is explicit: declining to renew a fixed-term contract because of pregnancy is direct gender discrimination — the no-comparator principle running through this whole cluster applies to renewal decisions as fully as to dismissals. Irish law adds layers: expiry-without-renewal counts as dismissal in defined circumstances, the standard expiry exclusion only operates where the contract carried the properly executed waiver the legislation demands, and pregnancy dismissals are automatically unfair with no service requirement. Bring the contract itself to advice — what it failed to say often opens doors.

The Evidence: Expectation, Sequence, Successor

Non-renewal cases are built from three materials. The expectation: the renewal history, the colleagues renewed while you weren’t, the assurances, the roster planned past your end date — preserved in writing wherever it truthfully can be. The sequence: expectation, announcement, non-renewal — the timing pattern that raises the inference and shifts the burden. The successor: the hire into essentially your role after “the work ended” — the exhibit that converts explanation into pretext, preserved with dates from postings and announcements. The weeks before a post-announcement end-date are for building this file, while the expectation is still the official story.

Routes and Clocks

The WRC architecture applies — discrimination with its shifted burden and two-year ceiling, unfair dismissal where the technical doors open, six months extendable to twelve from the acts (the clocks in full). And where the non-renewal followed your assertion of rights or a complaint, victimisation runs alongside — contract non-renewal appears expressly in retaliation law’s catalogue, this site’s home ground. The honest assessment takes one conversation with the contract, the history and the dates.