How many hours can you legally work in Ireland over consecutive days?

bluefivetwo23

Hi there, I’m sorry if this is in the wrong section. I can’t find the answer to this clearly online. It’s in hospitality.

I’m working 58 hours over the course of 8 consecutive days and I’m wondering is this allowed?

It goes from a Wednesday-Wednesday (8 days in total). Prior to this I worked 7 days straight and I just feel like it’s too much and a fairer spread of days off is possible just not being carried out due to lazy scheduling.

Just wondering if this is normal? Thanks

Irish_wolf

You can find the laws regarding working hours and rest periods here:

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1997/act/20/enacted/en/print.html

If you've never read a document like this before it can take a while to wrap your head around the legal language but it should be clear.

Here are some relevant sections for you:

Weekly Rest Period 13—

(2) Subject to subsection (3), an employee shall, in each period of 7 days, be granted a rest period of at least 24 consecutive hours; subject to subsections (4) and (6), the time at which that rest period commences shall be such that that period is immediately preceded by a daily rest period.

(3) An employer may, in lieu of granting to an employee in any period of 7 days the first-mentioned rest period in subsection (2), grant to him or her, in the next following period of 7 days, 2 rest periods each of which shall be a period of at least 24 consecutive hours and, subject to subsections (4) and (6)—

So yes if your employer can justify it you can for work more than 7 consecutive days provided they give you 2 full consecutive days off starting after a daily rest period of 11 hours on the day you finish your last shift. So you could work 8 days on straight and finish your last shift at 1pm then and have 2 days starting at midnight that night.

Not a typical way of doing things to be honest, most employers try to give you at least a day off per week to comply with the weekly and daily rest periods but you will get a lot of this kind of weird scheduling in hospitality. It's the only type of job I've had where I literally had to print off sections of that Act and shove it in my manager's face.

Of course there are many provisions, technicalities, and emergency situations that may justify a longer working week but these usually don't apply to someone working in hospitality.

Ted222

https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/employment-rights-and-conditions/hours-of-work/working-hours/
Some relevant information here.