Seamus McGranaghan qualified as a Solicitor in O'Reilly Stewart Solicitors in 2003 and is an experienced Commercial Lawyer dealing with employment, commercial and education cases.
He has experience in the Industrial Tribunal representing both Claimants and Respondents and has provided seminars in relation to particular areas of employment law. Seamus is the only member of the Education and Law Association in Northern Ireland. He specialises in advising schools and colleges on policy matters, employment issues and student welfare. He is also responsible for the Education Law Quarterly Review.
In addition to having contributed at Legal Island’s Education Updates since 2010, Seamus in association with Legal Island provides a live “Employment Law @ 11” webinar on the first Friday of each month, dealing with all aspects of Employment law affecting Northern Irish employers.
Rolanda: I'll read it.
"And the redundancy situation where roles are being made redundant and different roles are being created," we kind of mentioned that, "and you implement an interview process to fill the new roles, can you open this up to external candidates as well as those at risk of redundancy?"
Seamus: Well, you've always got an obligation on redundancy to protect your existing workforce. So, before you would open up to external, I think you have to go through the internal process. And if you weren't able to get a suitable candidate arising from that, then, potentially, go out externally. I think that you would have an issue if you did a redundancy process and your roles and you didn't let the internal staff apply for those first of all.
Rolanda: And I think sometimes HR people can feel a bit torn between their Equal Opportunities policies and ensuring all roles are advertised as widely as possible. But it is important to remember your obligation at that point in time to existing staff.
Seamus: Yeah, to avoid redundancy. Your obligation in redundancy is to try to avoid it. And if there's roles there and you're putting them out, it's going to cause difficulties.
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