The High Court has quashed an unfair Circuit Court decision in Traveller family hotel discrimination case after the High Court found the Circuit Court case was unfair due to excesssive intervention by the Circuit Judge.
The case concerned a family who were members of the Traveller community who had suffered discrimination from a hotel. After the family had been declared homeless, they were provided with an emergency payment to assist them in accessing accommodation. However, upon their arrival at the hotel, the staff insisted they could not honour their agreement unless the family provided a credit card. The Family took the case to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) who decided in the family’s favour finding that the hotel “had full knowledge that the complainant, as a social welfare recipient and in receipt of housing assistance, would not readily have a credit card and, therefore that such an insistence was a decide used to deny the [family], the right to equal treatment in the provision of accommodation” The family were awarded a total of €22,000 in compensation.
The hotel appealed the decision to the Circuit Court, who overturned the decision. However, a recent High Court ruling has quashed the Circuit Court judgement due to unfair proceedings. The High Court determines the Circuit Court hearing was “unfair as a result of excessive intervention” by the Circuit Court Judge who used the word “itinerant” in reference to Travellers during the appeal hearing. The High Court described this language as “inappropriate and derogatory.
The High Court concluded that “…the proceedings in the Circuit Court were rendered unfair by the excessive interventions of the learned Judge.”
Mr Justice O’Donnell will now make an order for the appeal to be “remitted to the Circuit Court to be dealt with by a different judge.”
FLAC had represented the family and Sinéad Lucey, FLAC’s Managing Solicitor, commented:
“Ireland’s courts now operate in a much more diverse society. FLAC have long highlighted the need for judicial non-discrimination and equality training and the introduction of a publicly available ‘Equal Treatment Bench Book’ (such as exists in the UK) to provide detailed guidance to the judiciary and all court users and professionals on ensuring equal access to the courts for groups who experiencing discrimination and disadvantage.”