This article examines recent developments concerning employee and trade union rights to collective negotiations with employers. It considers the extent to which the constitutional guarantee of freedom of association is protected by the present legal framework. Ireland’s “voluntarist” system of industrial relations is considered in the light of the enactment of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Acts 2001–2004, and the recent interpretation of the legislation in the case of Ryanair v The Labour Court [2007] I.E.S.C. 6. The article also looks at the future role of the Labour Court, the State’s main industrial relations tribunal and a key plank of the voluntarist system.