This case was handled in the Equality Tribunal Decision DEC-E2013-083.  In short, the complainant was a medical secretary suffering from diverticular disease and a debilitating bowel condition.  She had an office adjacent to toilet facilities but was moved.  She was awarded €70,000 by the Equality Tribunal.

On appeal, the Labour Court considered the issues and upheld the failure to provide reasonable accommodation for the period 2007 to 2010 after which the employer was found to have considered the issue and “in many respects their response was a model of how an employer should respond in the type of situation with which they were presented”.  Accommodations were offered but the complainant rejected them all.   The Court found that she had no justifiable grounds for doing so.

In terms of her upgrading in situ, the complainant had argued that all others were upgraded into their own jobs while she was upgraded in a new post in primary care.  As an agreement was reached on or about that time whereby the complainant would transfer to the primary care unit the complainant was upgraded in the role she then occupied.  Therefore, she was not treated differently to others. This aspect of her claim was not upheld.

The Court went on to consider how much of the €70,000 was awarded by the Tribunal for that aspect of her claim and decided that an award of €65,000 was the appropriate award in this case.

Why is this case of interest?

• The Court first considered the timeliness of the complaint.  It concluded that a failure to provide reasonable accommodation “amounted to the keeping in force of a discriminatory regime, rule, practice or principle”.  In other words, a failure to provide reasonable accommodation could stall the application of the normal deadlines for submitting a complaint.
• The respondent had also continued to review the decision it had taken on where to locate the complainant and this too, based on Cast v Croyden College [1998] IRLR318 could prevent the time from running against the complainant.

Read the full case review here:

http://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/Cases/2014/March/EDA1410.html