Every payment right in Ireland is counted from one date

Almost every argument about payment on an Irish job comes back to counting. The Construction Contracts Act 2013 fixes the dates, counts in calendar days, and gives a statutory route to adjudication when the parties cannot agree. Get the count right and most disputes never start. Get it wrong and a sum falls due, or a right lapses, before anyone notices.

The dates that matter

Three dates run the cycle, and all of them are counted from the first one.

• The payment claim date. The date the contract fixes for each interim payment. The payee serves the payment claim on or after it, and everything else counts from here.
• Twenty one days for the response. The payer who wishes to contest the amount must serve a payment response within twenty one days of the payment claim date, stating the sum proposed and the basis for it.
• Thirty days to the due date. Under the default position the amount claimed falls due for payment no later than thirty days after the payment claim date.

Count the way the Act counts

The periods in the Act are calendar days. Counting weekends out, which feels natural, produces a deadline later than the real one, and by then the response window may have closed or the due date may have passed. The safe habit is to fix the payment claim date the moment the cycle is agreed and work every deadline forward from it in plain calendar days.

The right to adjudicate

The Act gives a party to a construction contract the statutory right to refer a payment dispute to adjudication. That right cannot be contracted out of. It is a fast route to a decision that binds on an interim basis, designed to keep cash moving while any longer argument runs elsewhere. It is available on RIAI forms and Public Works Contracts alike, because it comes from the Act, not the contract.

Records win the referral

An adjudicator works quickly and decides on what is put in front of them. The party that can show the payment claim date, the claim served, the response missing or late, and the sum unpaid, has a straightforward referral. The party reconstructing the sequence after the fact has a harder time. The dates and the notices are the case, and they are only there if they were captured as the cycle ran.

The discipline

Diary the payment claim date for every cycle. Count the twenty one days and the thirty days from it, in calendar days. Serve and keep every notice. Do that and the money arrives on time in the ordinary case, and the referral is ready in the case where it does not.