The first student with Down syndrome to enrol in the fine art degree programme at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) has failed in a complaint of disability discrimination against the college.
NCAD was accused of failing to give necessary supports and accommodation to Ellie Dunne (26) during her first semester in 2023 before she failed a crucial first-year module.
In a decision published on Saturday, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) rejected Dunne’s complaint under the Equal Status Act 2000 against NCAD. The college’s lawyers said discrimination was denied “in the strongest possible terms”.
The claim was dismissed primarily for failure to comply with the rules for giving legal notice of an equality claim, but adjudicator Breiffni O’Neill also rejected an argument that the college could have discriminated against Dunne by asking her to re-sit the module.
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NCAD was running an honours degree course, and the obligation to re-sit and pass the failed module was “an inherent and essential element of [NCAD’s] academic standards”, he wrote.
Over the course of several hearings beginning in September 2024, the tribunal heard evidence that a third of students at NCAD have self-declared additional needs of some description.
Dunne’s mother, journalist Katy McGuinness, said she “had a sense things were fairly chaotic” at NCAD during her daughter’s first semester, in autumn 2023.
She said Ellie took “a long, long time to have confidence to express herself with people” and had to be regarded as being “almost non-verbal” until she got to know them.
“One of the characteristics of her version of Down syndrome is that it takes a long time to understand instructions given to her,” she said.
McGuinness said her daughter’s long-time home support worker, Nathalie Scharwatt, was enrolled in the same course and was to assist by breaking down instructions “into bite-sized chunks” for Dunne as part of an accommodation plan.
This also saw Dunne assigned two days a week with an NCAD-provided educational support worker, the tribunal heard.
McGuinness said that by October 2023, the second month of the term, Scharwatt was being “excluded” from Dunne’s educational support.
Dunne gave evidence in person last June under special arrangements which saw the adjudication officer and lawyers for each side meet her in a separate room while other hearing participants watched by video-link.
Asked by her barrister Aisling Mulligan whether she had been told by her tutors she needed to improve her work on one assignment for the failed module, which was to make a necklace, she said both her tutors had “liked it”.
She said one had said her output was “good” and another that it was “very nice”.
She said she could not remember whether the NCAD worker was present for a field trip to Meath Street, Dublin 8 to make sketches and take photographs for another assignment on the module.
Asked how she felt when the NCAD worker was not there, Dunne replied: “Scared.”
She added that she would not be able to get from Meath Street to NCAD “without help” and that she thought Scharwatt had brought her back.
Barrister Rosemary Mallon, for NCAD, asked whether people were “welcoming” at the college.
“No, they were rude,” Dunne replied.
Asked who was rude, the complainant said her NCAD-assigned support worker and her two tutors were “nice” but added: “Sarah Glennie was rude.”
“She’s the director of the college. When did you meet her?” Mallon asked.
“I don’t know,” Dunne replied.
“When you said Sarah was rude, was she rude to you?” counsel asked.
“Rude to Katy,” Dunne said, referring to her mother.
In her evidence, Glennie denied ever meeting or interacting with Dunne.
Mallon asked Dunne whether she had been aware that she “could have repeated” the failed module.
“I didn’t know, no,” the complainant said.
The tribunal heard there was strong dispute between Dunne’s parents and college authorities on the question of resitting the module.
After word came that she had failed the module that November, it emerged that Dunne’s name had been typed into a disability support assessment document without consent, in what NCAD admitted was a breach of protocol.
McGuinness said her daughter’s signature had been “forged” and that the family’s relationship with the college “broke down” at that point.
Siún Hanrahan, NCAD’s head of academic affairs, said the complainant’s parents took it as “a very offensive thing that Ellie had not successfully achieved the learning outcomes of the module”.
“[Their] view was that the slate should be wiped clean,” she said. “Under the [academic] regulations, that’s just not possible ... we cannot wipe the slate clean, we cannot,” the witness added.
Mediation failed to resolve the matter, the hearing was told.
The tribunal was told last summer that Dunne was accepted on to a degree course in art at the Technological University of Dublin, but had deferred taking up her place for a year.
