The Government has been called on by a leading recruitment firm to introduce a robust employee-vetting service to tackle what it claims is a growing trend of “litigious employees submitting bogus claims” against employers.
Dublin-based Excel Recruitment, which places about 9,000 temporary and permanent staff a year with employers spanning the retail and hospitality to medical sectors, says it has witnessed first-hand “the detrimental impact” of such practices.
Excel’s managing director, Shane McLave, went through a number of examples he said his firm had been involved in where individuals placed with clients have taken cases with the Work Relations Commission (WRC), only to find that they had previously pursued similar cases in the past.
“It’s important to note that of course we fully acknowledge and respect the right of employees to take legitimate claims against their employer where that employer is responsible for an injury or loss,” Mr McLave said. “But we are coming across more and more situations involving serial claimants – basically individuals who repeatedly file employment-related claims, often with minimal or no legitimate basis, in an attempt to exploit the system for personal gain.”
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He said this type of activity “places a significant burden on businesses, both in terms of time and financial resources”.
Excel is calling for the introduction of an Irish system similar to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) in the UK, which helps companies’ recruiting decisions by identifying candidates who are unsuitable for certain work or have a track record in taking cases against employers.
The recruitment firm says Irish companies, which do not have access to such a system, are exposed to “to professional or serial fraudsters who, if recruited, can end up submitting bogus claims and exploiting the system”.
It said that the Garda vetting system was inadequate as it was primarily focused on safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.
In contrast, the UK’s system offers multiple levels of checks – covering basic, standard and enhanced assessments – that provide employers with varying degrees of information based on their needs.
This tiered approach allows UK employers to tailor their vetting process to the specific requirements of their industry, which includes checks that can reveal information about a candidate’s civil actions.
“Actions are currently being taken by Government and oversight bodies to put a halt to those repeatedly ‘staging’ car accidents, and we are calling for a similar stance to be taken with employers’ liability claims,” Mr McLane said. “It’s time we introduce a vetting process that can help weed out these serial claimants before they become a liability.”
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