Most of what people believe about notice during probation comes from the wording of their own contract, not from the law. The law is the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973 — section 4 carries the bands, and the whole Act is short enough to read against the six beliefs below. Each is set out the same way: the belief, what the Act’s own words say, and one concrete case you can rerun on the minimum notice calculator. Three terms come up throughout. “Continuous service” is your unbroken period of employment with the same employer. “Pay in lieu” is money paid instead of working out a notice period. The “WRC” is the Workplace Relations Commission, the state body that hears complaints under this Act. This is general information about the statute, not legal advice; for a decision about your own job, ask the WRC, Citizens Information or a qualified professional.
Myth 1: “On probation you have no right to notice”
The belief
Contracts usually contain a probation clause saying the job can be ended during probation with little or no notice. Many people read that as meaning the statutory notice rules only start once probation is over.
What the Act says
Section 4(1) does not mention probation. Its trigger is a length of continuous service: “An employer shall, in order to terminate the contract of employment of an employee who has been in his continuous service for a period of thirteen weeks or more, give to that employee a minimum period of notice calculated in accordance with the provisions of subsection (2) of this section.” The line is 13 weeks of continuous service, whatever the contract calls the first months of the job. Below the line the Act sets no minimum, and the calculator shows “not applicable” rather than zero weeks, because the Act does not say zero weeks.
What it means for you
Take someone who started on 1 January 2026 and is given notice on 1 April 2026. In the Act’s whole-week count that is 12 weeks of service — one week short of the line — so the Act does not apply to them. Give the same person notice the following day, on 2 April 2026, and the count reaches 13 weeks: the Act applies and the employer owes at least one week. In calendar terms one day moved the answer, because it completed the thirteenth week; the probation clause plays no part in it.
Myth 2: “Notice is whatever the contract says”
The belief
You signed a contract with a notice clause in it, so that clause is the deal, whichever way it cuts.
What the Act says
Section 4(5) deals with the clause that cuts against you: “Any provision in a contract of employment, whether made before or after the commencement of this Act, which provides for a period of notice which is less than the period of notice specified in subsection (2) of this section, shall have effect as if that contract provided for a period of notice in accordance with this section.” A clause below the statutory figure is not struck out; it is read as if it said the statutory figure. The other direction is different: the bands in section 4(2) are a floor, not a ceiling, so a contract that promises more notice than the Act is held to that promise.
What it means for you
Two cases show both directions. An employee with seven years’ continuous service has a contract that says one week; the Act’s band for that service is four weeks, so the contract is read as four weeks. An employee with three years’ service has a contract that says eight weeks; the Act’s band would give two, and the contract’s eight weeks stand.
Myth 3: “Notice is the same for everyone”
The belief
“A week’s notice” is what most people quote, as if it were a single rule for every job.
What the Act says
Section 4(2) sets five bands, each keyed to complete years of continuous service:
| Continuous service | Employer’s minimum notice |
|---|---|
| 13 weeks to under 2 years | 1 week |
| 2 to under 5 years | 2 weeks |
| 5 to under 10 years | 4 weeks |
| 10 to under 15 years | 6 weeks |
| 15 years or more | 8 weeks |
Each band is drafted with “or more” at the bottom and “less than” at the top, so a year counts only once it is complete, and it completes on the anniversary of your start date, not before.
What it means for you
An employee who started on 1 March 2011 and is given notice on 1 March 2026 has 15 complete years on that day: the top band applies, the minimum is eight weeks, and the notice runs to 26 April 2026. Give the same person notice a day earlier, on 28 February 2026, and they have 14 complete years: the band below applies and the minimum is six weeks. The day the notice is given moves the answer, so put the actual date into the calculator, not a rough month.
Myth 4: “I have to give as much notice as my employer”
The belief
Whatever the employer would owe you in notice, you owe the same back when you resign.
What the Act says
Section 6 sets the employee’s side at a flat figure: an employer is entitled to not less than one week’s notice from an employee who has been in continuous employment for 13 weeks or more. It does not rise with length of service. One thing the Act does not say, and this guide should not dress up as if it did: a contract can ask the employee for more than the Act’s one week, and if so the longer period binds — but those extra weeks come from the contract itself, ordinary contract law, not from this Act, which only sets the floor.
What it means for you
An employee with nine years’ continuous service who resigns owes the employer one week under the Act. Read the other way round, that service sits in the employer’s five-to-under-ten-year band, where the employer would owe four weeks. The floor works the same way on your side, though: an employee with two years’ service whose contract asks for four weeks is held to those four weeks by the contract, even though the Act’s own figure is one — the calculator shows both and labels which one applies.
Myth 5: “Part-time staff on under eighteen hours have no notice rights”
The belief
The 1973 Act contains an exclusion for anyone normally working fewer than eighteen hours a week, and older advice still repeats it as if it bit today: work few hours, get no statutory notice.
What the Act says
The words are still printed. Section 3(1)(a) reads: “This Act shall not apply to— (a) employment of an employee who is normally expected to work for the same employer for less than eighteen hours in a week,” But the Law Reform Commission’s revised text carries a note under that section: the limitation is restricted, from 20 December 2001, by section 8 of the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001, which reads: “Each relevant enactment shall apply to a part-time employee in the same manner, and subject to the like exceptions not inconsistent with this section, as it applies, other than by virtue of this Act, to an employee to whom that enactment relates.” A “part-time employee” under that Act is anyone whose normal hours are less than a comparable full-time employee’s. So for a part-time worker the hours exclusion no longer takes them outside the Act: the thirteen-week threshold and the bands apply to them in the same way as to anyone else.
What it means for you
Take an employee with seven years’ continuous service on a short-hours contract. Read the 1973 words alone and they are outside the Act; since 2001 they sit in the same band as a full-timer with the same service — four weeks. The minimum notice calculator therefore asks nothing about hours and says why under the form. Section 3(1) still leaves out certain family members living in the employer’s home or working on the employer’s farm, the Permanent Defence Force, the Garda Síochána and seafarers under the Merchant Shipping Act. And do not confuse the old eighteen-hour line with the 18.5-hour weekly limit on work, study and volunteering that Carer’s Allowance sets as a qualifying condition — a different number, for a different purpose (the Carer’s Allowance calculator covers that scheme).
Myth 6: “If they pay me off I lose my rights”
The belief
Taking money instead of working your notice, or signing something that waives notice, means you have given the entitlement away and cannot raise it afterwards.
What the Act says
Section 7 permits both waiver and payment in lieu, and says what the payment does to your dates: “(1) Nothing in this Act shall operate to prevent an employee or an employer from waiving his right to notice on any occasion or from accepting payment in lieu of notice. (2) In any case where an employee accepts payment in lieu of notice, the date of termination of that person's employment shall, for the purposes of the Act of 1967, be deemed to be the date on which notice, if given, would have expired.” The entitlement is not lost; it is converted. Subsection (2) is the part people miss: if you accept pay in lieu, then for the purposes of the Redundancy Payments Act 1967 your employment is treated as ending on the day the notice would have run out, not the day you left.
If neither the notice nor the pay in its place is given, the route is a complaint to the WRC under section 41 of the Workplace Relations Act 2015: section 41(6) allows six months from the date of the contravention, and section 41(8) lets an adjudication officer accept a complaint up to 12 months after it where the delay was due to reasonable cause. The extension is at the officer’s discretion, not a right.
What it means for you
An employee with seven years’ service and weekly pay of €850 before tax is in the four-week band. If the employer does not want those weeks worked, the pay in lieu is four weeks of pay, €3,400 before tax. The calculator stops there; how a termination payment is taxed is a separate question, and the redundancy tax calculator deals with the tax side of termination lump sums.
What the Act does not settle
Section 8 is one sentence: “Nothing in this Act shall affect the right of any employer or employee to terminate a contract of employment without notice because of misconduct by the other party.” There is no severity test in those words, no “gross” and no “serious”, so the Act itself does not say which conduct is enough to end a contract without notice. That is decided case by case at the WRC on the facts of each complaint. Nor does this Act decide whether a dismissal was justified; it deals only with the length of notice and the pay that goes with it.
The calculator applies the sections above and nothing else. Rerun any of the six cases on the minimum notice calculator; the sources page records the statutory text behind each band and the date it was last read.