If you’re reading this in the week it happened: what was done to you is the situation Irish employment law treats most severely — and the protections do not depend on service length, on the dismissal letter admitting anything, or on you having formally notified anyone of the pregnancy. This page is the map for right now: the two legal routes, the evidence that decides them, and the clocks — written calmly, because the law gives you more room than the panic suggests.
The Two Facts That Change Everything
First: dismissal for pregnancy is automatically unfair with no twelve-month service requirement — the ordinary qualifying period vanishes where the dismissal results from pregnancy, ante-natal appointments, or exercising maternity rights, which disarms the “still on probation” and “only here five months” lines employers reach for. Second: the same dismissal is direct gender discrimination under the Employment Equality Acts — no comparator needed, burden shifting to the employer once your timeline supports the inference, compensation to two years’ remuneration. Two routes, one dismissal, no double recovery: the election between them turns on remedies sought (reinstatement lives on the unfair-dismissal side; the higher compensation ceiling on the equality side), and it is the first strategy conversation of the file — the fuller picture sits on the pregnancy discrimination hub.
The Pretext Patterns, Named
Almost no dismissal letter says pregnancy; the published decisions catalogue what they say instead — and what adjudicators make of it. The sudden performance case: concerns with no prior paper trail, materialising days after the announcement, read as contrived. The restructure of one: the “role gone” that reappears under a new title — the full anatomy lives at redundancy while pregnant. The probation fail after months of no complaint. The contract quietly not renewed — its own analysis. The pregnancy-related absence held against you — unlawful, and covered separately. In each pattern the contest is identical: their explanation must survive your timeline, and the burden of surviving is theirs.
This Week: The Discipline
- Anchor the dates in writing: if the announcement was verbal, the follow-up email creating the record goes today; the dismissal communication, whatever form it took, gets preserved;
- Preserve everything somewhere personal: emails, messages, reviews, the team chat congratulations — access to work systems tends to end abruptly, and the record you keep is the case you have;
- Contemporaneous notes: what was said, when, by whom, who else was present — written now, while it’s exact;
- Sign nothing: exit paperwork and settlement offers wait for advice — the 2024 NDA rules make your employer fund the independent review, and the document is void without it;
- Mind the clocks: six months to the WRC, twelve for reasonable cause — and the instinct to deal with it after the baby comes is precisely how strong claims die. The clocks in full.
Time limits in these cases are short, strict, and depend on your exact circumstances — WRC complaints generally run on months, civil claims on years, and important extensions exist, particularly for survivors of abuse. Never assume you are out of time, and never assume you have time: take advice promptly. Nothing on this page is legal advice for your situation.
Dismissed - and It Started With the Announcement?
Bring the timeline as you remember it. One confidential call maps both routes, the realistic value, and what to do this week - with nothing decided until you decide it.
Call 01 5827148