Civil servant awarded €10,000 for disability discrimination after department made ‘obvious error’

The Department of Social Protection has been ordered to pay a civil servant €10,000 for disability discrimination after failing to properly examine how it could accommodate her when a full-time remote work arrangement ended.

The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) found officials at the department made an “obvious error” by failing to get a medical report examining the worker’s disabilities and “appropriate measures” to assist her.

In a complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998, Tracey Ahern said that because of a number of medical conditions which got worse in 2019, including mobility problems, she needed “close access” to a bathroom when at work.

Having been out sick for 11 months in 2019, Ms Ahern was allowed to get back on the job by working remotely, partly because of the Covid-19 pandemic and her heightened risk, the tribunal heard.

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While being “onboarded” for this remote work, Ms Ahern had the use of an office in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, though she was originally assigned to Thurles. As the office in Nenagh was a former medical room, it had an attached toilet and was “particularly suited” to Ms Ahern’s needs, her Fórsa trade union representative Donna Mooney said.

Ms Ahern would have liked to use the Nenagh office permanently for a blended working arrangement, but this was denied as the complainant was “assigned to Thurles” and the expectation was that the office would be used for a civil servant assigned to Nenagh, Ms Mooney said.

Instead, the department tried to move her back to the Thurles office, which lacked the bathroom access she needed.

Ms Ahern had said in her evidence that she had “no issue” sharing an office or working in a “less modern building” and that the key issue for her was bathroom access. However, her requests to work from Nenagh were “rejected out of hand”.

Dermot Sheridan, principal officer in the department’s workplace planning section, said he went as far as touring the department’s building in Thurles and identifying a “suitable” office for Ms Ahern. He said the department was content to set aside a bathroom for the complainant’s sole use.

In his decision on the case, WRC adjudicator David James Murphy noted Ms Ahern’s position that it was “unreasonable” of the department to not provide her an office “suitably close to a bathroom while also insist she attend the office”.

Mr Murphy said the approach by officials examining how Ms Ahern could be accommodated was “deficient in some respects”. This included the failure to get a medical report on the complainant’s disabilities in the context of office accommodations.

“This omission led to key misunderstandings in how the respondent proceeded. These misunderstandings have clearly persisted until the hearing of this matter,” Mr Murphy noted.

He said three locations in the Nenagh office had been put forward by the complainant, but that the respondent “only considered” one of these – the same office Ms Ahern had worked in before.

Mr Murphy added that the department only told Ms Ahern during the WRC hearing that it might be in a position to offer full-time remote work “despite the complainant having been on sick leave for nearly a year and a half”.

The department was relying on an assessment that Ms Ahern was “medically unfit to work” for failing to engage with her further on potential accommodations. While Ms Ahern had been seeking further engagement, it was “clear” that the department “has opted not to engage and essentially views the matter as closed”.

He said the exact extent of Ms Ahern’s financial loss was “unclear” but that he was satisfied the discrimination “contributed” to her taking sick leave and being hit with a “significant loss of income”. Mr Murphy awarded “limited compensation” of €10,000 in the case and directed the department to “take appropriate measures to enable [Ms Ahern] return to work”.