WRC’s €40,000 award goes beyond Irish limit
FLAC (Fee Legal Aid Centres) has called for draft legislation that would increase the level of compensation available to victims of discrimination in Ireland to be “urgently advanced and enacted”.
The call came after an adjudicator at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) awarded a deaf man compensation of €40,000 after he succeeded in a disability discrimination complaint against the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) under the Employment Equality Acts.
Noel O’Connell had applied for an Irish Sign Language (ISL) advisor role with the NCSE in 2022, but the council did not shortlist him for the role because he lacked a formal qualification in ISL – despite ISL being his first and native language.
A formal review by the Commission for Public Service Appointments later found that he had met the requirements for the role.
The NCSE told him, however, that the recruitment process had closed at that stage.
‘Indirect discrimination’
In a decision published yesterday (18 February), the WRC adjudicator found that the NCSE’s actions “amount to indirect discrimination” against O’Connell, whom FLAC represented in the case.
The sum of €13,000 is the maximum that can be awarded under equality legislation in cases concerning access to employment.
In what FLAC described as “a landmark move”, however, the adjudicator went beyond the maximum compensation limit in Irish legislation and awarded O’Connell €40,000 in compensation on the basis that the relevant EU directive requires sanctions in such cases to be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive”.
Compensation level ‘not a deterrent’
FLAC managing solicitor Sinéad Lucey welcomed the WRC decision, saying that the remedies available to victims of discrimination must be adequate.
The organisation had argued that, in this case, the evidence showed that its client had suffered losses “far in excess” of the €13,000 limit.
“The WRC decision confirms that the compensation limits in Irish anti-discrimination law are not consistent with EU law,” Lucey stated, arguing that the level did not act as a deterrent against discrimination.
FLAC called for the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024, which emerged from a review of equality legislation, to be expedited in light of the WRC decision.