Bryan
Dunne
Partner
Bryan Dunne is a partner and head of Matheson’s Employment and Benefits Practice.
He has led Matheson’s top tier ranked employment practice since 2013 and grown the team into one of the largest in the Irish market with 28 employment specialists.
With over 25 years’ experience advising on all aspects of employment law and industrial relations, Bryan is the trusted advisor to HR, in-house legal and executive teams across a broad range of industries, including financial services, technology and pharmaceuticals.
Areas of Expertise
Recognised for his responsiveness and ability to counsel boardrooms and leadership teams through any employment law related crisis, Bryan is consistently ranked as a leading employment law expert by the key legal directories.
Bryan provides strategic and practical advice on the full range of contentious and non-contentious employment law matters, including complex internal investigations and disciplinary processes, workforce restructurings and sensitive terminations, with particular focus on senior executive level employees. He regularly represents clients before the Workplace Relations Commission, the Labour Court, the Circuit Court and the High Court in high-profile matters with regulatory and reputational considerations.
Bryan has also advised on some of the largest Irish and cross border corporate transactions in recent years, and has built up considerable experience in the varied employment and labour aspects that arise in commercial projects and reorganisations when acting for foreign purchasers, such as TUPE, employee relocation and post-acquisition restructuring. This experience spans numerous industry and regulated sectors and includes both the public and private sector. His commercial acumen is greatly valued in such corporate negotiations. Having developed extensive expertise in the establishment and operation of European Works Councils, Bryan is the go-to person in the Irish market in this area.
He is also widely recognised as an expert in the area of advising regulated entities on their obligations under the Central Bank of Ireland’s Individual Accountability Framework. He was the lead advisor on the first two cases before the Irish High Court under the CBI Fitness and Probity regime when introduced in 2014.
Bryan is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association of Ireland, the European Employment Lawyers Association and the American Bar Association’s International Labour and Employment Law section.
Bryan contributes substantially to employment law thought leadership via the Matheson Employment Law Podcast (now running over 11 years), legal publications, insight series and articles and has been a regular conference speaker in Ireland, the US and Europe over the last 20 years.
As a Spanish speaker, Bryan advises many leading Spanish companies on employment law issues in their Irish operations. He is also a member of the Irish Spanish Economic Association.
Experience and Education
- Defending High Court injunction applications brought by employees, typically senior executives, seeking to restrain disciplinary proceedings against them or the termination of their employment;
- Successfully obtaining High Court injunction applications including to secure the return of confidential information;
- Guiding employers through crisis management situations including the handling of employees who are incarcerated during employment, managing the employment law elements and reputational fall-out from social-media scandals, dismissing an employee acting as a corporate spy for a competitor and one who was involved in a cyber-attack on their employer;
- Advising clients on how to manage complex whistleblowing and disciplinary investigations and procedures, often times requiring a report to be made to the Gardaí or a regulatory body, whilst also managing the employment law considerations for the individuals involved;
- Advising on some of the largest Irish and cross border corporate transactions in recent years including Horizon Therapeutics plc’s $28 billion acquisition by Amgen Inc., Horizon Therapeutics plc’s acquisition of EirGen Pharma, Abbvie Inc’s $63 billion acquisition of Amgen Inc, and the subsequent integration of the two businesses, Novo Nordisk’s acquisition of Alkermes’ Irish operations, together with various other high value private equity acquisitions in the tech, pharma, healthcare and biotech sectors;
- Advising on all aspects of the establishment and ongoing management of European Works Councils and European Employee Forums. Bryan also regularly delivers training to employee representatives of special negotiating bodies and European Works Councils on the requirements of the applicable Irish legislation. He has also guided clients on how best to successfully defend any challenge from their European Works Council, including a notable challenge to a large-scale European wide rationalisation programme. Bryan has advised on litigation relating to Irish law governed EWCs in Ireland, Germany and the UK, and guided numerous UK EWCs on their conversion to Irish law post Brexit and;
- Providing advice and training on all aspects of employment equality and defending claims before the Workplace Relations Commission, the Circuit Court (in respect of gender equality) and the Labour Court. Bryan also guides clients through their gender pay gap reporting obligations and is leading the way on preparing clients for the onerous pay transparency obligations which are coming down the tracks. In addition, he regularly advises clients on their D&I initiatives from an ESG perspective.
- University College Dublin (Diploma in Employment Law)
- Law Society of Ireland (Diploma in Commercial Law)
- Law Society of Ireland (Diploma in Advanced European Law)
- University of Limerick (Bachelor of Arts in Law and European Studies)
