AN assistant principal officer at the Department of Equality and Law Reform has been awarded more than £15,000 because she was refused a jobshare position after maternity leave.
The ruling, which found the Minister, Mr Taylor, guilty of discrimination under the 1977 Employment Equality Act, was made by an equality officer who reports to the Labour Relations Commission (LRC), which operates under the Department of Enterprise and Employment. The ruling may be appealed to the Labour Court.
It had been proposed to transfer the equality service to Mr Taylor's Department under the new Employment Equality Bill, which was found to be unconstitutional last week. The LRC has objected strenuously to the transfer. In a recent letter to the Government, the LRC chairwoman, Ms Catherine Forde SC, gave as a reason for the commission retaining the service that equality officers might have to investigate job discrimination in Mr Taylor's Department.
The woman who won the award went on 14 weeks maternity leave from the personnel/organisation/ finance unit of the Department on April 4th 1994. Eight days later she applied to return to work on a jobshare basis, but was offered a full time position or a career break, which she opted for.
The Department argued that her job was unsuitable for sharing, although her immediate superior, the personnel officer, had indicated that it was. The equality officer deemed the personnel officer the best qualified person to decide on the issue.
Management denied that other vacancies at assistant principal level were suitable for job sharing, but the equality officer found that the Department was "in an ideal position" to accommodate her as two of those positions were vacant at the time.
Last June the woman turned down the offer of a job share in the Department of the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. The equality officer found that she had suffered indirect discrimination, as a woman with family commitments - but that she could have mitigated her loss by accepting the job share offered.
The Minister and Secretary of the Department - who are the legal entities under the 1977 Act - were ordered to refund her for all loss of earnings from April 1995 to June 1996, £2,000 compensation for stress and anxiety suffered as a result of discrimination.