Section 12 of the Principal Act is amended by the insertion of the following subsections after subsection (7):
"(7A) An employee who claims to have suffered penalisation wholly or mainly for having made a protected disclosure may apply to the Circuit Court for interim relief within 21 days immediately following the date of the last instance of penalisation or such longer period as the Court may allow.
(7B) In this section and Schedule 2, references to 'employee' include a worker referred to in paragraphs (d), (g) and (h) of the definition of 'worker' in section 3(1).
(7C) In any proceedings by an employee under the Workplace Relations Act 2015 in respect of an alleged contravention of subsection (1), the penalisation shall be deemed, for the purposes of this section, to have been as a result of the employee having made a protected disclosure, unless the employer proves that the act or omission concerned was based on duly justified grounds.".