The two kinds of termination
For convenience: either party (or, in one-sided drafts, only one) may end the contract on notice, no reason required. The commercial questions are the notice length and any early-exit charges. For cause: termination on defined events — material breach, insolvency, change of control. "Material breach" is a litigated phrase; better drafts define it, give a cure period for remediable breaches, and specify notice mechanics precisely.
What Irish law adds — and doesn't
If the contract is silent on duration, Irish law will often imply that an ongoing commercial relationship is terminable on reasonable notice — and what is reasonable (weeks, months, occasionally longer) is decided after the fact, by a judge, at your expense. Separately, the common law right to terminate for repudiatory breach survives alongside the contract's machinery unless clearly excluded. The traps live in the interaction: terminate under a contractual clause without meeting its conditions and you may yourself have repudiated the contract — the classic own-goal of wrongful termination.
Drafting and using the clause
- Symmetry check: can both sides exit on comparable terms, and if not, is the asymmetry priced?
- Cure periods for remediable breach — with a clear mechanism for what notice must say
- Notice mechanics matter: method, address, deemed delivery — courts hold parties to them
- Consequences of termination: accrued rights, payment for work done, handover, data return, clauses that survive
- Before terminating in real life: take advice first. The difference between lawful termination and repudiation is usually procedural, and it is decided by what you did in the 48 hours around the notice
How our fees work
You get a fixed quote in writing before any work starts — no hourly-rate surprises and no meter running while you think. If the scope changes, the quote is revised in writing before we continue. In contentious business, a solicitor may not calculate fees or other charges as a percentage or proportion of any award or settlement. How contract solicitor fees work in Ireland →