Payment of Wages Act, 1979

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8.—(1) Where an instrument or mode of payment to which section 3 of this Act applies is used as the mode of paying wages to an employee to whom this section applies, the following provisions shall have effect:

(a) none of the following enactments shall apply to wages whose payment is effected by that mode, namely, the Truck Act, 1743, section 20 of the County Works (Ireland) Act, 1846, or section 1 of the Act of 1874,

(b) no action or other legal proceedings shall be instituted under section 4 of the Act of 1831 in respect of wages whose payment is effected by that mode or in respect of a lawful deduction taken into account in calculating that payment,

(c) no proceedings for a penalty in respect of a payment of wages effected by that mode shall be instituted under either section 9 of the Act of 1831 or section 3 of the Act of 1874.

(2) For the purposes of section 9 of the Act of 1831 (whereby it is an offence to enter into any contract or make any payment which by that Act is declared illegal) the following provisions shall have effect:

(a) neither—

(i) a payment made in pursuance of this Act by means of an instrument or mode of payment to which this Act applies, nor

(ii) the signing of a document in pursuance of section 3 of this Act,

shall be regarded as being a contract or a payment so declared illegal,

and

(b) a contract to which section 1 of the Act of 1831 applies shall not be regarded as being a contract so declared illegal by reason only of the fact that it incorporates or otherwise includes all or any of the terms contained in an agreement referred to in section 3 (1) of this Act.

(3) For so long as—

(a) an arrangement described in subsection (1) of section 3 of this Act is in force, or, having regard to subsection (2) of that section, exists by implication, or

(b) a notice under section 4 of this Act is in force,

section 1 of the Act of 1874 shall not have effect as regards any payment of wages, whether made pursuant to the arrangement or otherwise, by the employer concerned to the employee concerned.

(4) Nothing in any statute which is referred to in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting, or as ever having prohibited, the making by an employer of a deduction from any wages where the deduction is or was made with the consent of the person to whom the wages are or were payable.

(5) In any proceedings under section 4 or 9 of the Act of 1831 or under section 3 of the Act of 1874 it shall be a good defence for the defendant to prove that he reasonably believed that the mode used to effect the payment of wages to which the proceedings relate was an instrument or mode of payment to which section 3 of this Act applies.