Duncan Inverarity a partner and Head of A&L Goodbody's Employment Law group and has practiced exclusively in the area of employment law and industrial relations in multiple jurisdictions. Duncan advises public and private sector employers on both contentious and non-contentious matters. He advises Board rooms across Ireland and abroad on strategic and complex employment and industrial relations matters. Duncan also specialises in crisis management for clients and has advised on some of the most high profile corporate issues in Ireland. Duncan regularly appears for clients in the Workplace Relations Commission, the Circuit Court, the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Duncan also acts for partnerships in mediated settlements and in proceedings in the High Court.
The complainant was a massage parlour worker who was dismissed after refusing to provide "sexual services" to her male boss and clients of the respondent.
The complainant was a massage parlour worker who was dismissed after refusing to provide "sexual services" to her male boss and clients of the respondent.
The managers of the massage parlour, an Irishman and a non-Irish woman, told her she "could say no" – but they "could assure her that she wouldn’t get more clients" if she refused. She "began to provide limited sexual services" but came under "pressure" to provide additional services despite telling management she didn’t want to do it.
She returned from a fortnight’s holiday in early 2022 to discover she was off the roster, being told by management that there was no more work for her and that she "could find another job".
No submissions were made nor was there any appearance by or on behalf of the respondent. All the evidence of the complainant was uncontested.
The complainant said that she has made a protected disclosure regarding the conditions and circumstances of her employment (i.e., complaints about being pressured to provide sexual services). The protected disclosure was made by the complainant to the respondent directly regarding the nature and safety of the work as well as concerns about her own health, safety and conditions of work.
The AO was satisfied there was a direct link between the worker’s refusal to provide sexual services and the acts of penalisation and said the male manager’s persisting demands for sexual services were "of even greater concern".
The adjudicator said he could only reasonably conclude that the man’s conduct was "further penalisation in the form of coercion, intimidation, harassment or unfair treatment" of the worker for making her protected disclosure.
He decided that the nature and extent of the penalisation were of such an egregious nature as to merit the maximum possible award under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 of 5 years’ pay. The massage parlour was ordered to pay €91,000 in addition to awards for further employment law breaches which brought the total compensation package to €102,550.
This case is quite particular on its facts and represents an example of a protected disclosure with the most egregious and serious consequences for the employee. This was a record compensation award for whistleblower penalisation and the total compensation package was the second-highest sum awarded to a single claimant this year.
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