Employer Resources Newsletter - May 2026

Managing Flexible Working Requests During the School Summer Holidays

The school summer holidays often create childcare pressures for working parents, leading to increased requests for temporary flexibility from their employers. Common requests may include earlier finish times for camp collections, adjusted start and finish times, temporary remote or hybrid working, reduced hours or compressed working weeks and additional annual leave or unpaid leave. While many organisations want to support employees during the summer months, employers must also balance operational requirements, consistency and legal compliance. This article examines this seasonal HR topic and how to manage the associated risks. 

Statutory Flexible Working Employee Entitlements 

Parental Leave

Under the Parental Leave Acts, employees with at least 12 months’ continuous service who are natural parents, adoptive parents or acting in loco parentis are entitled to up to 26 working weeks of unpaid parental leave per eligible child.

Parental leave is available to employees with children under 12 years of age, or under 16 where the child has a disability or long-term illness.

Importantly, parental leave legislation does not create a statutory right to shorter working days or reduced daily hours for childcare purposes. The entitlement is generally designed around blocks of leave rather than ad hoc reductions in working time.

As a result, requests such as finishing work one hour early each day for summer childcare reasons would normally fall within the organisation’s discretionary flexible working arrangements rather than statutory parental leave entitlements.

Right to Request Flexible Working

The Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act introduced a right for certain employees to request flexible working arrangements for caring purposes.

Employees who are parents or acting ‘in loco parentis’ (acting as a parent to the child) may request flexible working arrangements to care for:

• A child under 12 years of age
• A child under 16 years of age with a disability or illness.

Employees providing personal care or support to a specified person living in the same household who need significant care for a serious medical reason may also request flexible working arrangements. 

An employee must have six months’ continuous employment in order for their approved flexible working arrangement to commence.

Flexible working arrangements may include:

• Flexible working hours
• Reduced working hours
• Remote or hybrid working
• Adjusted work patterns

However, the legislation provides a right to request flexible working not an automatic entitlement to receive it.

organisations may refuse requests where there are legitimate grounds, including operational requirements, staffing capacity, service delivery concerns or an inability to reorganise work.

HR Best Practice Considerations

Apply a Consistent Approach

Consistency is critical when managing discretionary flexible working requests. If one employee is granted flexibility while another is refused, the organisation should be able to demonstrate objective and reasonable grounds for the different decisions.

Inconsistent approaches can create employee relations issues, perceptions of unfair treatment and potential discrimination risks. Managers should therefore be equipped with clear guidance on approval criteria, operational considerations and documentation requirements.

Consider Employment Equality Risks

Flexible working requests linked to childcare responsibilities can intersect with equality legislation. Under the Employment Equality Acts, employers must avoid discriminatory treatment on protected grounds including gender and family status.

Indirect discrimination occurs when a policy appears to apply equally to all employees but in fact adversely impacts a particular class of employees. In the context of flexible work requests, more women tend to have childcare responsibilities and organisations should ensure that any relevant policies and procedures are not indirectly discriminatory against female employees.

To help minimise this risk, organisations should ensure:

• Requests are assessed individually
• Decisions are objectively justified
• Similar situations are treated consistently
• Managers avoid assumptions about caring responsibilities

Assess Operational Impact

Organisations should carefully assess whether flexibility can be accommodated without creating disproportionate operational disruption. Relevant considerations may include service coverage, peak activity periods, ability to redistribute work and impact on other employees.

Be Clear About Temporary Arrangements

Where flexibility is agreed, the organisation should clearly document:

• The duration of the arrangement
• Any review dates
• Expectations around availability and performance
• Reversion to normal working arrangements

This helps avoid misunderstandings and reduces the risk of temporary arrangements becoming viewed as permanent entitlements.

Avoid Creating Unintended Precedent

Organisations are often concerned about setting precedents when agreeing to flexible arrangements. While precedent alone should not prevent organisations from supporting employees, discretionary arrangements should be clearly documented, assessed individually, based on operational feasibility and subject to review. A well-drafted flexible working policy can help manage expectations and support consistent application.

Practical Options for Flexible Work Requests

Organisations seeking to support working parents during the summer holidays may consider:

• Earlier start and finish times
• Adjusted break schedules
• Compressed hours
• Temporary additional remote working
• Planned annual leave
• Short periods of unpaid leave
• Flexible rostering arrangements

Some organisations also introduce temporary summer flexibility initiatives such as summer hours, early finishes on Friday or seasonal hybrid working arrangements.

The Importance of Policy and Communication

Clear policies are essential for managing expectations and ensuring consistency. Best practice dictates that organisations should have appropriate policies to manage requests for flexible working, statutory leaves and remote working where relevant. These policies will provide clear guidance for managers when assessing requests and help to ensure a consistent approach.

These policies should outline:

• How requests should be submitted
• Assessment criteria
• Decision-making processes
• Documentation requirements

Communication is equally important. Employees are more likely to accept declined requests where the rationale is explained clearly and alternative options are explored.

Conclusion

The school summer holidays frequently create challenges for working parents and corresponding pressures for line managers.

While Irish employment law does not generally require employers to approve specific requests to accommodate childcare responsibilities, organisations should approach such requests thoughtfully and consistently.

The most effective organisations typically rely on a combination of clear policies, consistent decision-making, operational feasibility and transparent communication.

By adopting a balanced and structured approach, organisations can support employee with the reconciliation of work and family responsibilities while maintaining operational effectiveness and reducing legal risk.

Adare is a team of expert-led Employment Law, Industrial Relations, and best practice Human Resource Management consultants. If your organisation needs advice, support, or guidance about compliance requirements or any HR issues, please contact Adare by calling (01) 561 3594 or emailing info@adarehrm.ie to learn what services are available to support your organisation.

Dublin Office: (01) 561 3594 | Cork Office: (021) 486 1420 | Shannon Office: (061) 363 805

info@adarehrm.ie | www.adarehrm.ie

WRC Awards €15,000 and Permanent Contract in Fixed-Term Employment Claim

Background:

The Complainant was employed as a Data Technologist by the Respondent since September 2016.

She was employed on a specific purpose fixed-term contract dated in July 2016 for the purpose of carrying out specific research activities.

She claimed that she was entitled to a Contract of Indefinite Duration.

Summary of Complainant’s Case:

The Complainant commenced employment on a Fixed Term Contract in September 2016 to work on a specific research project.

She submitted that the Respondent breached Section 9 of the Protection of Employees Fixed Term Work Act 2003.

The research had commenced in 2008 with public funding and continued until 2024.

In July 2023, following a promotional process, the Complainant secured a more senior position and was assigned additional higher-level duties and responsibilities within the project.

At no point during her employment was the research project discontinued or paused. It began in 2008 and over the period grew and formed part of the greater government policy on climate action.

The securing of the more senior position added further duties and responsibilities communicated to the Complainant in 2023 was without question a second contract as the duties identified fell outside the original specific purpose and further demonstrated that the work in question was ongoing and continuous.

The Complainant asserted that the grounds stated by the Respondent in the contracts of employment were not objective grounds, and that they were vague and general and did not meet the requirement of Clause 8 of the Act. The statements incorporated within the contract were based on considerations only on the status of the employee; and was not for the purpose of achieving a legitimate objective of the employer.

The Complainant further asserted that the Respondent breached Section 9 of the Act, and that the aggregated duration of the contract and the extensions to-date exceeded the relevant thresholds.

Summary of Respondent’s Case:

The Complainant’s specified purpose contract provided that the event which will cause the fixed-term contract to an end is ‘whichever of the following occurs first:

Completion of the overall project referred to above and/or the purpose for which you are employed.

Completion of the section of the project for which you are employed; or

Cessation of the project for whatever reason including but not limited to withdrawal or expiry of sanction for this post, withdrawal or termination of funding by the funding agency or otherwise at any stage during the life of the project.’

None of the above events had occurred and the Complainant therefore remained employed under the contract dated July 2016.

Where a fixed-term contract is not renewed, there can be no contravention of Section 9(1), (2) or (3) of the Protection of Employees Fixed Term Work Act 2003.

As the Complainant had been employed on one specified purpose contract of employment and there had been no renewal of this contract, there was no eligibility for a Contract of Indefinite Duration under the 2003 Act in this case.

Findings and Conclusions:

To determine the question, it was necessary to address whether the Complainant’s position was any different to co-workers working with the Respondent who were engaged on generally similar work but who were on contracts of indefinite duration (CID), and especially having regard to the total, and considerable length of the Complainant’s employment and the nature and duration of the project on which she was working. The Complainant had been employed on a fixed term, specific purpose contract for just under ten years. For context, this would represent about a quarter of an entire working life for most workers.

> The Contract of Employment

On a reading of the employment contract, the Adjudicator found that neither duration nor purpose were adequately defined; the first not at all, and the second extremely vaguely as to ‘carry out specific research activities with the named research project.’

The Adjudicator also noted that the objective set out in the Framework Agreement concerning the research project specified that contracts of indefinite duration should be the normal basis for the employee relationship.

The Adjudicator reasoned that it would not be inconceivable that the ‘specific purpose’ for which this project existed could last, if not indefinitely (especially having regard to its role in addressing climate change which is unlikely to be concluded anytime soon), then for quite some time.

Thus, the ‘completion’ of the Complainant’s contract might never materialise. If that were to be the case, the Complainant’s original contract would be little more than a device to avoid giving her a CID and to bypass the requirements of the Act. This may not have been the original intention in 2016, but after almost ten years it was long past time to look at it in a different light.

> ​Was the Contract Renewed?

The Complainant argued that her 2023 promotion was, de facto, a contract extension. There were ‘new developments,’ and a significant enhancement of monitoring etc.

The Respondent’s position was that this was a continuum and specifically that no formal contract was issued on any of these occasions. Both the Respondent and the funding Department refer to the individual episodes of the programme as ‘phases.’

In reality, each of these so-called ‘phases’ was independently approved for funding by the Department. There was no guarantee as one ended that another would be funded either at all or to what extent.

The Respondent had a choice. It could have offered the Complainant a contract for the duration of each ‘phase,’ but it understood well that this would eventually bring her within range of a CID, and it chose not to do so. Instead, it chose to operate this long-term strategy which placed its own convenience and interests above that of the Complainant and outside the law.

> ​Ruling

The Complainant was engaged on work that was part of the core work of the Respondent.

Contracts of Indefinite Duration are the norm within the public service body, and its employees are, in general, public servants employed on contracts of indefinite duration.

It was excessively and unacceptably vague to rely on the concept of a ‘specific purpose’ to describe a project whose duration is ‘incapable of precise ascertainment’ and it would completely undermine the protections provided by the Act to permit it on those facts.

It might be possible to make a case on this point where the degree of uncertainty was in the nature of provision for a margin of error, for example about whether a project might end in six months, but it could be nine, or end in two years but it could be two and a half.

But a failure to ‘ascertain precisely’ a duration that puts a worker on a ten-year contract without the benefits of a Contract of Indefinite Duration is another matter entirely. As noted earlier, this was a project which was in its eighteenth year, and which had references on its website to targets for 2030, by which time it will have been in existence for twenty-two years; about half the normal span of a working life.

The definition of ‘specific purpose’ was little more than a contrivance by the Respondent to evade its responsibilities under the Act. The terms of the Complainant’s contract were constructed in such a way as to exclude or limit the application of the Act and her right to a contract of indefinite duration.

By the time each of the episodes of renewal of the projects took place in 2019 and 2023, it was clear that the life of the project had moved outside that which might reasonably be comprehended by a specific purpose or fixed term contract, and her position should have been regularised at that stage.

The failure to do so constituted a breach of Section 9 of Protection of Employees Fixed Term Work Act 2003.

The Complainant’s promotion in 2023 was a decisive moment; it represented such a material variation in her contractual status as to represent an extension of her original contract for the purposes of the Act, and/or a new contract and for this, and the reasons above she was entitled to a contract of indefinite duration.

Decision:

The Adjudicator directed the Complainant be given a Contract of Indefinite Duration and awarded her compensation in the amount of €15,000. 

Recommendations for Employers

In this Case, the Respondent engaged the Complainant on a fixed-term contract in 2016 to work on a research project. The contract was linked to a specific project and associated funding arrangements. However, the events tied to the termination of the contract never materialised and the Complainant remained employed on the same fixed-term contract for almost ten years.

In 2023, the Complainant successfully applied for a role involving higher-level duties and responsibilities. She argued that this amounted to a second fixed-term contract of employment, triggering an entitlement to a contract of indefinite duration under the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003. The Respondent argued that the Complainant remained employed under a single specific purpose contract and that no renewal had occurred.

The Adjudicator concluded that the contractual terms had been drafted in a manner that sought to limit the application of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003. The Adjudicator directed the Respondent to place the Complainant on a contract of indefinite duration and awarded €15,000 in compensation.

This decision is particularly relevant for nonprofit organisations that rely on fixed-term contracts linked to external funding. While funding dependency may provide objective justification for fixed-term arrangements, organisations should regularly review long-running contracts to ensure the rationale remains valid and that contractual terms are clearly defined and legally compliant.

Adare’s HR Barometer Pulse Series 10.1 Now Open!

The Adare Trusted People Partners HR Barometer Pulse Series 10.1 is now open and gathering current insights to include:

• Pay transparency preparedness across Irish organisations
• Employee turnover trends and absence levels
• Salary increases delivered in 2025 and those planned for 2026
• Learning and development practices and broader workforce metrics

The results will provide a clear and practical benchmark to help you evaluate your organisation’s readiness for what will be a new era of pay transparency.

The survey takes approximately 5 minutes to complete and focuses on a concise set of core HR metrics. Participation is open to organisations with 20 or more employees, and all responses are treated as strictly confidential and reported only in aggregated, anonymised form.

Why participate?

By taking part, you will receive exclusive access to the full benchmarking results, enabling you to:

• Assess your organisation’s readiness for pay transparency requirements
• Benchmark your approach to pay and workforce practices against other organisations
• Support internal discussions with robust, external data
• Make more informed decisions as 2026 progresses

Ensure your organisation is represented and gain valuable insight into how others are preparing for pay transparency.

Key Findings Briefing 

Participants will also receive an invitation to an exclusive virtual briefing where Adare Trusted People Partners’ HR experts will present the key findings, emerging trends and practical implications for organisations preparing for 2026 and beyond.

Complete the survey today