A female member of the Traveller community has been awarded €1500 in compensation by the Irish Equality Tribunal for being asked to leave a branch of the Mothercare Ireland store.
In November 2009, Margaret Connors (the complainant) was in a branch of Mothercare along with her brother and four young children to buy a birthday present for her youngest child. They were approached by a man in casual clothes who asked them to leave the premises. When the complainant asked why, a woman in a uniform told the group that they did not have to give a reason. Mrs Connors told the Tribunal she could think of no other reason for the request than the fact that she and her family were members of the Traveller community.
Mothercare Ireland claimed the incident never took place and no CCTV footage was available from that day. Equality Officer Tara Coogan (Equality Officer) found that both sides had given the Tribunal honest accounts of the incident. In assessing the complaint, she found it was likely that the incident had in fact occurred, as the complainant was able to identify a uniformed member of staff. The fact that there were other Travellers in the complainant's company "makes it also more likely that she would have been identified as a Traveller". The Equality Officer noted that under Irish equality legislation, the burden of proof rests with the complainant to establish that a prima facie case of discrimination has in fact occurred.
The Equality Officer held that Mothercare had not provided any documentary evidence to show it had properly investigated the complaint, and therefore did not rebut the complainant's allegations. The Equality Officer concluded "there is an onus on providers of goods and services to justify any refusal to engage with a person belonging to such a group by relying on activities that are not discrimination within the meaning of the Acts. Providers of goods and services must ensure that all of its employees are made aware that it is not lawful to refuse service simply because a person is viewed to belong to a social group."
In another decision of the Equality Tribunal from January this year, Equality Officer Gary O'Doherty found that another member of the Travelling community had not established a prima facie case against Next Department Store.
The complainant, Rosie McDonagh claimed that in July 2009 she was approached by a manager of a Next store, Ms A, and was asked to leave the store and was banned because of the "bad company she was keeping". The complainant alleged she was then followed around the store. Another manager, Ms B also informed the complainant that she was barred from the premises. The complainant also claimed her hand was bruised by Ms A during the incident. In a similar incident the previous month, the complainant alleged that she and two friends, Ms C and Ms D, were asked to leave the same Next store. The respondent's employees Ms A and Ms B alleged that the claimant had behaved in a disrespectful and verbally abusive manner when asked to leave the store during the first incident.
The claimant argued that the store had a policy of discriminating against Travellers. The respondent disputed this accusation, stating that it had previously barred a non-Traveller for disrespectful behaviour towards the store, and that they had a duty of care towards their staff and other customers.
The Equality Officer concluded that the incident in question stemmed from the earlier situation, rather than the complainant's status as a Traveller. The Equality Officer found that although Ms A perhaps should have handled the situation differently, he did "not consider that the complainant would have been treated any differently if she had not been a Traveller. It was the complainant's behaviour on her previous visit that was at issue in her being asked to leave on this occasion, not her status as a Traveller and/or her connection with Ms C and Ms D." For this reason the Officer dismissed the complainant's case.