The respondent in this case did not engage with the Tribunal and therefore, in common with DEC-E2014-055 above the Equality Officer had no submission or evidence from the respondent to take account of.

The complainant was employed as a delivery driver by the respondent who employed 10 office staff and 15 drivers.  While working on 30 May 2011 the complainant suffered an accident and was absent for 8 weeks.  On advice, he sought a return to work to lighter, office-based duties.  He was afforded two hours of this on return before being asked to pack fridges resulting in pain.  The complainant was accommodated with office work for about 4 weeks and then asked to resume his old delivery route.  He was promised an assistant but none materialised.  This circular situation of returning to office duties, then being asked to do deliveries followed by time off continued until he returned on 13 September and was dismissed without warning.  The dismissal was purportedly a redundancy but the complainant adduced evidence that his position was immediately advertised.

The complainant also asserted that the respondent had intimated to him that he could revert to a self-employed status if he wished and had subsequently denied it had been said by the time the complainant was dismissed.

As with the earlier case, the Equality Officer found the complainant to be credible and accepted his evidence.  He found that the respondent’s denial of its offer to the complainant to change his employment status would not have occurred had the complainant retained his health and found that this constituted less favourable treatment on grounds of disability.

He also upheld the complainant’s allegations relating to failure to provide reasonable accommodation.  He was satisfied that with 10 office staff the respondent could probably have accommodated the complainant had the respondent “made any deliberate effort to meet its legal obligations toward the complainant”, even though the evidence presented appears to suggest that the employer did at least attempt to accommodate the complainant.

The Equality Officer found in favour of the complainant in respect of his dismissal which was because of his disability

As the respondent was found to have directly discriminated against the complainant on the disability ground, to have failed to reasonably accommodate the complainant, and to have dismissed the complainant because of his disability, the Equality Officer awarded the complainant €25,000 as compensation for the distress suffered.

Why this case is of interest:

• The Equality Officer appears to require the respondent to provide the complainant with a role entirely different to the role he was employed for, rather than require him to be provided with the accommodations needed to undertake his own role.