REPORTED ALLEGATIONS of discrimination in the workplace increased by 60 per cent last year, the Equality Authority has said in its annual report.
In 2009 there were 1,721 queries under the Employment Equality Acts. That rose to 2,830 last year, according to the report, which is published today.
The authority said the steep rise in inquiries reflected the “current pressures on employment and the demand for updated guides to the legislation”. The biggest issues were gender, age and disability.
The authority had expected about 8,000 queries overall last year, and received 8,345.
The number of queries surrounding maternity benefits was down substantially last year.
Authority chairwoman Angela Kerins said the continuing years of austerity would put a strain on relationships in the workplace.
“We need to ensure that we are in a position to achieve and maintain greater equality and eliminate discrimination in an economically challenged environment,” she said.
Ms Kerins said multinationals needed to perceive Irish society as pro-equality and pro-diversity and there was a need for a national strategy for equality that should be considered as part of the State’s economic revival.
In 2009, queries under the Maternity Protection Acts and the Parental Leave Acts accounted for 58 per cent of submissions to the authority. Last year that figure was down to just over 40 per cent.
The authority believed unemployment was a factor in the fall-off, along with the absence of a targeted public awareness campaign. Queries relating to leave entitlement (399), return to work (310) and redundancy (179) were the most prevalent under the terms of the Maternity Protection Act, though time off for breastfeeding (43), leave for fathers (25) and time off for ante-natal classes also featured strongly.
The largest category of cases dealt with under the Equal Status Act was disability, which accounted for nearly half, followed by membership of the Traveller community, age and race.
CASE STUDIES: RULINGS
A disabled public servant, who is fertile but could not have children, went abroad to have a surrogacy service. She made a complaint to the Equality Tribunal because there is no legislative provision for leave entitlement for a mother who has a child born by surrogacy.
The woman was given a similar entitlement to parents who have just adopted a baby and the matter was settled.
A store assistant was awarded almost €54,000, or the equivalent of four years salary, after complaining of being the subject of sexual harassment by a director of the company. She eventually had to quit and successfully claimed discrimination on gender grounds.
A dyslexic student was awarded €3,500 against Brú Na Páirce, an Irish-language college in Co Kerry that refused her entry to a summer course claiming she would suffer a “sense of failure, humiliation and lack of self-esteem”. Siobhan Stack achieved a grade A in higher level Irish in her Junior Certificate but the college objected to the help she received in the exam as a result of being dyslexic.
Jobs website Loadzajobs.ie and an unnamed university foundation were forced to remove the word “young” from two job advertisements. In the case of the Loadzajobs.ie website it was held that looking for a “young, dynamic office manager” was discrimination on age grounds.
