Force majeure leave in Ireland (2026): the 3 paid days, and what actually counts

Republic of Ireland · About a 7-minute read · Facts checked 22 September 2026

Two things go wrong with this leave, and they go wrong in opposite directions. People are offered a day of annual leave instead, and take it, because nobody at the desk beside them knows there is a separate paid entitlement. And people assume it covers anything urgent and family-shaped, which it does not: it is narrow, it is specifically about injury or illness, and a bereavement is outside it.

It is also smaller than it looks, because of how the days are counted. That is the part worth reading even if you already know the rest.

The short version

What it is: Paid leave when a close family member's injury or illness needs you there immediately
How much: Up to 3 days in any 12 consecutive months, or 5 days in any 36
Part of a day: Counted as one full day, however little of the day you missed
Service needed: None. Section 13 attaches no service condition
The notice: In writing, after the leave, in the form the regulations prescribe or one to the like effect
A death in the family: Not covered. Compassionate leave is a matter for your contract
If it does not qualify: Up to 5 days unpaid leave for medical care, in any 12 consecutive months

Three things have to be true at once

Section 13 of the Parental Leave Act 1998 gives an employee "leave with pay from his or her employment, to be known and referred to in this Act as 'force majeure leave', where, for urgent family reasons, owing to an injury to or the illness of a person specified in subsection (2), the immediate presence of the employee at the place where the person is, whether at his or her home or elsewhere, is indispensable".

Read as a checklist rather than a sentence, that is three separate conditions, and all three have to hold:

An urgent family reason.
An injury or an illness of one of the people the section lists.
Your immediate presence, where that person is, is indispensable.

Most of the arguments about this leave are really arguments about the third condition. Citizens Information publishes a worked case study of exactly that: Mary is rung by her son's school to say he is sick and has to be collected as soon as possible, she leaves work, and her employer, having first offered her annual leave, accepts force majeure leave instead once she asks for it.

A planned appointment is a harder case, and honestly so: an appointment booked three weeks ago is difficult to describe as urgent, and it is not an injury or an illness arising now. That is the situation the unpaid medical care leave further down this page exists for.

Ask for it by name, and ask on the day if you can. The case study turns on Mary saying which leave she wanted. An employer who offers you annual leave is not necessarily refusing anything, and in a small workplace is often simply reaching for the only form they have. Force majeure leave has its own name, its own section of an Act and its own form, and the Act does not require you to have been there any length of time to use it.

Half a day costs you a whole day

This is the rule that decides how far three days actually goes, and it is in the Act rather than in anyone's policy. Section 13(4) caps the leave at 3 days in any period of 12 consecutive months or 5 days in any period of 36 consecutive months. Then section 13(5) says that a day on which you are absent on force majeure leave "for part only of the period during which he or she is required to work in the employment on that day shall be deemed... to be one day of force majeure leave".

So there is no such thing as half a day of force majeure leave. You work until eleven, you collect a sick child, you do not come back: that is one of your three days gone. Three separate afternoons in a winter of ear infections is the whole year's entitlement, and the fourth call from the creche has nothing left behind it.

Knowing that in advance changes what you do with the first one. If the situation is genuinely manageable by leaving at four instead of five, or by a grandparent going, that is a day kept for the one in February that will not be manageable.

The windows are worth reading carefully too. It is not three days a calendar year, it is three days in any period of twelve consecutive months, so the day you took last November is still in the count this October. The same goes for the five days across thirty-six months, which is the limit that catches people in the third year.

Those numbers are a floor rather than a ceiling. Citizens Information notes that depending on your employer and your contract you may be able to take more than this, and adds the question people forget to ask: if your employer does allow extra days, check whether those extra days are paid. The pay is guaranteed by the Act only for the days the Act covers.

Work out what you have left

Put in the day you need to take, then the days of force majeure leave you have already taken. This counts the two rolling windows in section 13(4) and tells you when an old day drops out of the count. It stays on your device.

This counts only the dates you type, against the two limits written into section 13(4). It is not a decision and it does not apply for anything. Your employer holds the record of the leave you have taken and is required to keep it, so if the count matters, ask them for it. A disagreement about the entitlement is heard by the Workplace Relations Commission. Confirm the rules on Citizens Information.

Who counts as a close family member

Section 13(2) lists them, and the list is wider than most people assume. It covers a person of whom you are the parent or adoptive parent, your spouse or a person you are living with as husband or wife, a person to whom you are in loco parentis, your brother or sister, your parent or grandparent, and a person who lives with you in a relationship of domestic dependency.

That last category was added later and it has its own test: someone who lives with you is taken to be in a relationship of domestic dependency if, in the event of injury or illness, "one reasonably relies on the other to make arrangements for the provision of care". The Act adds that the sexual orientation of the people concerned is immaterial, and that this is not to be read as limiting the category.

The prescribed form is older than the list. The notice form in the 1998 regulations sets out the categories as they stood then: child, adopted child or a person in loco parentis, spouse or partner, brother or sister, parent or grandparent. The domestic dependency category was inserted into the Act in 2006 and never made it onto that form, which also still refers disputes to a rights commissioner, an office replaced by the Workplace Relations Commission in 2015. The Act is what governs. If your situation is the domestic dependency one, expect to have to explain it, because the form gives you nowhere to write it.

A death is not covered, and the official pages say so plainly

This is the single most common misreading, and Citizens Information deals with it head on: if a close family member has died, you do not have an entitlement to force majeure leave. Its case study follows Mary again, months later, when her father dies suddenly and she asks for a day to go to the funeral. Her employer's answer is that force majeure leave is only for the illness of a close family member and gives no entitlement to leave following a death.

What exists instead is compassionate leave, and it is not a statutory entitlement at all. Citizens Information describes it as depending on your contract of employment, the custom and practice in your workplace, and your employer's discretion. Many Irish employers give compassionate leave and some give a good deal of it. It is worth knowing which it is in your case before you need it, because the answer is in a handbook rather than in an Act.

What the notice has to contain

The order is the opposite of most leave: you take it first and apply afterwards. Under section 13(3) you confirm the leave to your employer "as soon as reasonably practicable" after taking it, by notice in the prescribed form, specifying the dates and containing a statement of the facts entitling you to it. Citizens Information puts the practical version more simply: tell your employer as soon as possible that you need to take it, and make the written application as soon as you return.

The form itself is prescribed by the Parental Leave (Notice of Force Majeure Leave) Regulations 1998, and the regulations accept "a form to the like effect containing the information and declaration referred to in the scheduled form". So your employer's own form is fine, and so is a plain letter, as long as it carries what the schedule carries:

Your name and your PPS number (the form still calls it an RSI number)
Your employer's name and address
The name and address of the injured or ill person during the leave
That person's relationship to you
The nature of the injury or illness
The dates of the force majeure leave
A confirmation that your immediate presence at that person's address was indispensable, and a signed declaration that the information is true and complete

Your contract may also ask for a medical certificate as proof of the sudden illness or injury, which you can request from the doctor. Keep your copy: the Act requires notices to be retained for a year by the person who holds them.

It cannot come out of your annual leave

Section 14 settles the question the case study starts with. While you are on force majeure leave you are "regarded for all purposes relating to... employment as still working in the employment concerned and none of his or her rights relating to the employment shall be affected by the leave". And the absence "shall not be treated as part of any other leave from the employment (including sick leave, annual leave, adoptive leave, maternity leave, parental leave, leave for medical care purposes and domestic violence leave)".

So it is not a deduction from your holidays, it is not a deduction from your sick leave, and it does not eat into parental leave. It is also paid, which is what makes it different from almost every other emergency route out of a working day. Citizens Information adds the protection that goes with it: you cannot be unfairly dismissed for taking force majeure leave, or for asking to take it.

Your employer has to keep the record, for eight years

Section 27 requires an employer to make a record of force majeure leave taken by employees, with the period of employment and the dates and times of the leave, and to retain it for eight years. Parental leave records are kept for twelve years and records of leave for medical care for three. Failing to keep them is an offence under the same section.

That is useful to know for one practical reason. Three days across twelve months and five across thirty-six is precisely the kind of count that nobody remembers correctly two winters later, and the obligation to have the answer written down is your employer's, not yours. If there is a disagreement about how many days you have used, the record is the thing to ask for.

When it is not force majeure: the unpaid days for medical care

Since 3 July 2023 there is a second, quieter entitlement, and it covers much of what force majeure refuses. Leave for medical care purposes gives you up to 5 days of unpaid leave in any 12 consecutive months to provide personal care or support to a person who "is in need of significant care or support for a serious medical reason". It came in with the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 and sits in the same Act as force majeure, at section 13A.

The differences are the whole point of it:

It is unpaid, where force majeure is paid.
It does not have to be sudden. The test is serious medical need, not an emergency, so a planned course of treatment can fall inside it.
It cannot be taken in periods of less than one day, and a half day is again counted as one day.
Your employer can ask for evidence, which can be a medical certificate. Citizens Information notes that the certificate does not need to state the nature of the condition: it only has to state that the person is, or was, in need of significant care or support for a serious medical reason.
No minimum service is needed, and you do not have to give notice in emergency circumstances, though you should if you can.

The paperwork is slightly heavier than force majeure and worth doing properly. You give your employer a signed written confirmation, as soon as reasonably practicable, with the start date, the length of the leave and a statement of the facts. Your employer must keep that confirmation and give you a written acknowledgment that they received it, which you keep. That acknowledgment is the one piece of paper in this whole area that proves you did what the Act asks.

One caution the official page makes itself: "serious medical reason" is not defined in the Act. Nobody can tell you in advance exactly where the line falls, and a page that claimed to would be inventing it.

Three routes, in the order you would reach for them. Something has just happened and you have to go now: force majeure leave, paid, up to three days in twelve months. Something is serious but not sudden, such as treatment or recovery you need to be there for: leave for medical care, unpaid, up to five days in twelve months. Something that needs weeks rather than days: parental leave, unpaid, in much larger blocks, with notice and, unlike either of the other two, a service condition of a year under section 6.

Who decides, and where a disagreement goes

In the first instance your employer does, because this is an entitlement you exercise against your employer rather than a payment you claim from the State. There is no department to ring and nothing to apply for in advance.

If you and your employer disagree about the entitlement, the Workplace Relations Commission hears it. The complaint is made on the WRC's online form and Citizens Information sets the clock plainly: within 6 months of the dispute happening, extendable by a further 6 months where you can show reasonable cause for the delay. The WRC also runs an information and customer service that will talk through the entitlement before anything becomes a complaint, which is usually the better first call.

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Official sources

Citizens Information: Other types of leave from work (force majeure leave, compassionate leave, making a complaint)
Citizens Information: Case study: force majeure leave
Citizens Information: Unpaid leave for medical care
Law Reform Commission, revised Acts: Parental Leave Act 1998, section 13 (force majeure leave, the limits, and the part-day rule)
Law Reform Commission, revised Acts: Parental Leave Act 1998, section 13A (leave for medical care purposes)
Law Reform Commission, revised Acts: Parental Leave Act 1998, section 14 (rights preserved, and not treated as other leave)
Law Reform Commission, revised Acts: Parental Leave Act 1998, section 27 (the records an employer must keep)
Irish Statute Book: Parental Leave (Notice of Force Majeure Leave) Regulations 1998 (the prescribed notice form)
Workplace Relations Commission: Parental Leave (force majeure limits)
Workplace Relations Commission: Leave for Medical Care

Facts checked against the official pages and the revised text of the Parental Leave Act 1998 on 22 September 2026. This is general information, not legal, employment or medical advice, and it cannot tell you whether a particular situation qualifies or what your own contract adds. Your employer applies these entitlements in the first instance and the Workplace Relations Commission decides disputes about them. Rules can change; always confirm on the official pages linked above.