The complainant is a Registered General Medical Practitioner and Specialist General Practitioner on the Register of Specialists as operated by the Irish Medical Council. The complainant is employed by the respondent in a permanent capacity as an Area Medical Officer and is currently on a career break. The complainant applied to the respondent for inclusion on a total of nine separate postgraduate rotational training schemes in psychiatry over a two year period between 2006 and 2007.

The complainant claimed that he satisfied all of the relevant selection criteria for inclusion on these training schemes and that the only reason why he was not selected by the respondent was on account of his age (he was aged 58 years at the date of the referral of the present complaint).

The respondent accepted that the complainant had several years' experience working in various posts in psychiatry; however, it submitted that his lengthy experience in psychiatry without evidence of obtaining the MRCPsych examination or any parts thereof indicated a lack of professional progression and therefore, he was not deemed suitable as a trainee on the basic specialist training programme in psychiatry.

The EO concluded that the complaints were not a series of ongoing acts but were separate and that there was jurisdiction to deal with only the last 4 complaints. However, the respondent could show a fair procedure and the claimant could not produce evidence that decisions were based on his age.
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