Victimisation and Psychological Safety in Irish Employment Law: Three Statutory Regimes, One Underlying Risk

Victimisation in Irish employment law operates across three distinct but overlapping statutory regimes, each with its own test, burden of proof, and remedy. A review of the current framework and recent WRC decisions maps these regimes against each other — and against a sharp recent rise in protected disclosure claims that Irish employers cannot afford to overlook.

Three regimes, three different tests

• Employment Equality Acts 1998–2015, s.74(2) — adverse treatment for making a discrimination complaint or opposing unlawful conduct; burden shifts to the employer under s.85A once a prima facie case is shown.
• Protected Disclosures Acts 2014 & 2022, ss.11–12 — since 2022, penalisation following a disclosure is presumed; the employer must prove the action was 'wholly unrelated' to it. Maximum five years' remuneration.
• SHWWA 2005, s.27 — penalisation for raising a health and safety concern; a shifting burden of proof and, unusually, unlimited compensation.

A 201% rise that employers cannot treat as noise

WRC protected disclosure complaints rose from 58 in 2020 to 301 in 2023 — a 201% increase in a single year between 2022 and 2023 alone. The 2022 amendment reversing the burden of proof onto employers means this is not simply a volume trend: it is a structural shift in legal risk. Once a worker has made a protected disclosure, the employer now carries the burden of proving that any subsequent adverse action was wholly unconnected to it.

What the awards actually look like

• €65,000 (WRC, 2020) — an employee subjected to shift cancellations after raising a safety complaint; the Adjudicator called penalisation 'a very serious matter which should be marked with a substantial award.'
• €150,000 total (WRC, 2020) — three care workers dismissed after complaining of sexual harassment by a resident; €50,000 each, split between harassment and victimisation findings.
• Care home whistleblower (WRC, 2020) — a targeted staff questionnaire identified the discloser by elimination; described by the WRC as 'exactly the type of treatment the Protected Disclosures Act was designed to prevent.'

The pattern behind the awards

Across cases in both the healthcare and social care sectors, the facts that drive larger awards are strikingly consistent: identifiable retaliation following a protected act, inadequate confidentiality protection for the person who raised the concern, and an absence of any documented, proactive support process. Where organisations can show a designated disclosure officer, confidentiality training, and genuine proactive support for the person who came forward, the evidence and case commentary consistently treat this as the difference between a defensible process and a compensable failure.