Statutory annual leave year

Can you provide a link to this March/April legal definition?

The vast majority of Irish employers run a leave year from Jan to Dec

Your employer is unlikely to change all of their processes and systems just to suit one employee

I'm working in the Civil Service, my leave year runs from the 1st February to the 31st January. It probably doesn't suit everyone, but that is the way it is.

But if you revert to the Organisation of Working Time act, it states that "

“leave year” means a year beginning on any 1st day of April;"

So even if you were to argue on a statutory basis, it would be the start of April not the end of April

This is not completely true. The annual leave year essentially only comes into play is when you want to carry leave over the 31st December.

If you only get the 20 statutory days then any remaining statutory days that you still have cannot legally be "lost" until the 31st of March. If you earn more than the statutory, say 25 days then 5 of those days are not statutory and the business/public sector can lose them on the 31st of December if the business has a different leave year.

The business cannot take statutory days as lost until the 31st March and this is the legal legislation date.

In the OP they state "public service" not necessarily the HSE.

I work in the "wider" public service and we changed, by agreement, that our leave year would run from 1/1 to 31/12.

Perhaps the OP could clarify if their "employer" has entered a similar agreement with its staff?

Can you quote the exact piece of legislation that you claim makes what I said untrue? Quote the wording that you said is contained in Section 2 of the OWT Act 1997.

If you can show me the exact piece of legislation proving me wrong, I'll be more than happy to apologise.

Read it more closely.

Isn't that down to company policy.

the law says that the leave year runs from March to April. And yes, the company decides, ultimately, when an employee can take leave.

But what they can’t say is that if you haven’t taken all your leave by Dec 31 that you must forfeit those days. They can say that it doesn’t suit them for you to take the rest of the week off and come back next Monday, but they would have to let you know when it DID suit them.

Not strictly true.

There is a section which allows a registered agreement to supersede this.

I’d really like to see this. Can you take a screenshot of it and post it? Citizens information is the official information website of the Irish government. It’s very unlikely that there’s incorrect information on it.

*”not strictly true”

The statutory leave year and the leave year observed by the employer, can be entirely different, to suit any operational pattern, so long as all statutory minimums are provided pro-rata and reconcilable with the statutory rate.

That notwithstanding, no employer is under any obligation to provide special arrangements in this regard to any individual, or group, against their operational arrangements.