A Roma woman and her niece who claimed they were not permitted to buy food items in a Dunnes Stores outlet in Dublin and were asked to leave have been awarded a total €6,000 by a Circuit Court judge over discrimination on grounds of ethnic origin.
Both were dressed in their traditional dress at the time of the incident at Dunnes North Earl Street store in November 2019.
Both appealed to Dublin Circuit Court after the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) rejected their complaint they were discriminated against on grounds of race and ethnicity contrary to the provisions of the Equal Status Acts.
Their case was brought by the Free Legal Advice Centres (Flac) against Dunnes Stores Unlimited Company.
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On Thursday, Judge John O’Connor allowed the appeal, found the two were discriminated against and awarded €4,000 to the woman, identified only as CT, and €2,000 to her niece, FE.
Discrimination is sometimes not recognised and there should be some awareness of the challenges and obstacles a minority ethnic person can endure in shopping and that they may have cultural concerns about some forms of communication, the judge said.
He made recommendations to assist Dunnes in setting up a system aimed at avoiding a recurrence of such incidents, including that security officers should “avoid making assumptions” and to have an internal objectively based complaint handling mechanism option. An apology in appropriate circumstances can go a long way to mitigate any potential damage, he added.
In her evidence, CT said she and FE were in the store to buy food and she had requested a cooked chicken at the deli counter and picked up vegetables in the vegetable section.
When she went to the cashier, she said a security officer approached her, took the food items from her and was verbally abusive to her and the store manager did not let her buy the food items. She was upset and ashamed as people were looking at her, she said.
FE, a teenager at the time, said she was asked to leave by the security officer and when she asked why, he identified them as being members of an ethnic minority and said they stole from the store.
In his evidence the security officer, an employee of Dunnes, said he previously barred CT from the store as she was asking customers to buy food for her. He said, on the day of the incident, he asked her to leave and, when she asked why, he replied because she was begging. He said she refused to leave and was verbally abusive. He phoned gardaí and she left before they arrived. He said he had no interaction with FE and did not refuse her services or goods.
Noting the direct conflict of evidence, the judge accepted the security officer believed he acted correctly and believed he was adequately trained in equality legislation.
On the balance of probabilities, the judge accepted, notwithstanding inconsistencies in CT’s evidence, that an incident whereby she was prevented from paying for groceries in the store occurred, it was different from how other shoppers would have been treated and it did affect CT. He did not accept the security officer grabbed her arm or mishandled her or used foul language as she had alleged. He accepted FE’s evidence she felt she could not continue with her purchase.
Noting CT and FE waited outside the store for gardaí to arrive, he said they were genuinely upset and, overall, their actions were consistent with persons who honestly felt aggrieved they had been treated unfairly. The complaint fell within the Equal Status Acts, he ruled.
The security officer, the judge said, subjectively felt he was doing his job to the best of his ability and was not engaged in discrimination.
That subjective view was “questionable” and there was failure to record previous alleged incidents involving CT, he found. Significantly, there was a mix up in discovery documents which related to a different person and a different incident and the only commonality between that other person and CT was their ethnic origin.
A failure to recognise discrimination is a common occurrence in society and discrimination has to be objectively assessed to uphold the rule of law, he said.
“In doing so, it is necessary to go beyond mere tolerance and recognise that inclusion and diversity are important for their own sake.” Situations of mistaken identity are common and, in these circumstances, there is an added possibility of “potentially stereotyping someone from an ethnic minority”.
