The number of cases taken against businesses at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) for discrimination on the grounds of race, membership of the Traveller community or sexual orientation doubled last year.
The cases were taken under the Equal Status Act by members of the public who felt they had been denied service by the businesses involved, or discriminated against by them in other ways.
There were 245 such cases taken by members of the Traveller community, according to the WRC’s annual report for 2024 which was published on Thursday, an increase of 86 per cent on the previous year. The number of cases taken on the grounds of race was up 115 per cent to 215 while those involving sexual orientation also more than doubled, although the number involved, at 31, was much smaller.
There were 192 cases taken in which discrimination on the grounds of disability was alleged and while this too represented an increase, the scale was more modest, at 13 per cent.
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There was an 11 per cent increase in the total number of cases taken under the Employment and Equality Act, which deals with discrimination in the workplace, meanwhile, with those relating to members of the Traveller community or relating to civil status, age or disability all up by more than a fifth when compared to 2023.
Complaints about pay and unfair dismissal are still the two leading sources of the commission’s work with 3,995 and 2,285 made respectively in relation to the two areas. Discrimination comes third in the list with 2,063 over the course of the year.
Abuses of the work permit system also feature prominently in the report. The WRC reports successful prosecutions against 77 businesses in 2024, with about two thirds of them operating in the food services sector and more than 80 per cent including breaches of the Employment Permits Acts.
It says its officials participated in more than 300 unannounced inspections of business premises with members of An Garda Síochána and other agencies last year as part of specific Empact (European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats) Labour Exploitation campaigns in April, June and October. More than half of the companies targeted were found to be breaching various employment legislation, commonly relating to permits.
Just over a third (34 per cent) of all calls made to the WRC helpline last year related to requests for information or complaints about work permits.
About 40,000 permits were issued last year, almost a third of them to allow people from overseas to work in the Irish healthcare sector. Complaints tended to focus on employers operating in the food services, retail and agricultural sectors, however.
In all, 5,156 inspections were completed in 2024 with €2.15m recovered in unpaid wages.
