The establishment of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) created a more streamlined structure for the submission of employment rights and equality complaints. All first instance complaints are now submitted to the WRC, whereas before they could be submitted to the Rights Commissioner Service in the Labour Relations Commission (LRC), the Equality Tribunal, or the Employment Appeals Tribunal.
On establishment of the WRC on 1 October 2015, it assumed responsibility for some 3,965 combined legacy complaints of the Equality Tribunal and the Rights Commissioners. Currently, 3,670 or 93% of the legacy caseload that the WRC assumed have been dealt with.
At the end of 2014, the Equality Tribunal had 1,426 complaints on hand. A corresponding figure is not available for Rights Commissioner cases although the service received 9,800 complaints that year. By the end of 2016, the legacy caseload was reduced by 60% to 1,628.
At year end 2017, the legacy caseload of 3,965 complaints assumed by the WRC in October 2015 has reduced to just 295.
Of the outstanding 295 cases, legacy complaints from the Rights Commissioner service totals just five cases which cannot be processed further at this point pending decisions of the High Court.
Of the 290 legacy complaints from the Equality Tribunal, a number of these cases cannot be processed further by the WRC at this point as they are pending decisions of other courts. In a number of other cases, decisions of the WRC are either pending or have hearing dates assigned over the next two month period. It is expected that all of these cases before the WRC will be processed to completion in the near future.
It should be noted that over the same period, the Adjudication Service of the WRC has received some 28,500 new complaints. Within this number, c. 92% of these current complaints are being fully processed, i.e. a decision is given on a complaint or it is otherwise resolved, in six months or less, where no postponement requests or late submissions.
