The number of UK employment cases plunging?  We asked about this earlier when we wrote that the UK Ministry of Justice released employment tribunal stats for the first quarter of 2014, and according to Michael Rubinstein Publishing, there has been a “huge fall in employment tribunal claims as a result of the introduction of fees to bring a case and have it heard.”

Lots of folks wrote in to explain to us the impact of these fees, and on August 5th we did a post which we entitled, “UK Employment Tribunal Fee: End Of The “Gravy Train” Or “Justice Only For Those Who Can Pay,” which set forth arguments for and against.

We now hear from Ireland.  Eamonn Gibney, an HR professional and business owner in Ireland wrote:

“Hi Richard,
Its an interesting debate, but I would be in favour of the introduction of fees here in Ireland. The ease of taking a frivolous or vexatious claim when there is no fee is just too much. People take claims for unbelievable reasons sometimes and its costing businesses a lot of money to defend and present for the cases.

If an employee feels really wronged, they won’t mind paying a small fee to take a claim and they will turn up for the case.”

high prices : An image of a man shocked at how expensive his bill is.

Mark Porter, an aviation employee in the UK disagreed, albeit wrting from the viewpoint of the UK:

“I am against the introduction of fees.   There was already a mechanism for dealing with frivolous or vexatious claims:  it was called a pre hearing review. … A rework of those rules relating to pre hearing reviews would have been far more sensible.

The reason I say this is because if you have just been dismissed (unfairly) and therefore out of work, and you are not on a bankers salary but still have bills to pay and children to feed, £1200 on top of any legal fees is a lot money to try to access justice and completely distracts from the original objective of the industrial tribunals that were set up in 1971.”