A family doctor has accused her former employers of discriminating against her by pulling out of an alleged deal to make her an equity partner in their GP practice after she was hospitalised with complications during her pregnancy.
In complaints under the Employment Equality Act 1998, Dr Marita Warren has accused her former employers, Dr Sean Montague and Dr Andrew Lavin, the partners in Kilnacourt Surgery in Portarlington, Co Laois, of discriminating against her by reason of gender and family status, victimisation, and unfair dismissal.
Dr Montague and Dr Lavin deny the allegations – with their barrister telling the WRC there was “never an offer made of equity partnership” to Dr Warren.
In evidence, Dr Warren told the tribunal that Dr Montague, Dr Lavin and practice manager Anne Moran met her twice in March 2022 to discuss a partnership arrangement that would involve an equity share in the profits of the business.
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She said the initial proposal was that she would complete a five-year “work in” period to a full share. Although she said she turned down the alleged offer at that stage, she told the tribunal her employers wanted to formally revisit the matter in a year and told her they would “happily” have her as a partner if she changed her mind in the meantime.
“They were asking, was I going somewhere else – I said I wasn’t,” she said.
Dr Warren’s evidence was that she agreed to an “increase of duties” after that – and an associated increase in sick leave, maternity benefits and pension contributions – by taking on a list of public patients under the General Medical Services (GMS) scheme in March 2022. The tribunal heard her salary was €1,650 a week gross for a three-day week.
In January 2023, when she was five weeks pregnant, Dr Warren told the tribunal she decided to inform her employer about her pregnancy earlier than she had intended because she was about to go away on a trip with colleagues – whom she suspected might deduce she was pregnant.
Dr Warren said she agreed “partnership in principle” with Dr Montague and Dr Lavin at a meeting on Thursday June 1st, 2023 on new terms, with a three-year work-in period starting with 80 per cent of a 1/3 profit share, adjusted for reduced working hours.
“I expressed a desire to sign the paperwork before I started maternity leave so I could hit the ground running. Andy Lavin replied: ‘Let’s get the donkey work done now [and] when you’re back in six to eight weeks, after maternity leave, we can look at signing it then,’” the complainant said.
At 4pm on June 7th, 2023, Dr Warren said, she decided to seek medical attention in connection with her pregnancy and went to A&E at the local maternity hospital in Portlaoise, before being taken by blue-light ambulance to the Coombe Hospital in Dublin.
She was 24 weeks pregnant at the time, she said, describing it as “the outer limit of survivability for a baby”. She said she spent 13 weeks and one day on sick leave as a hospital in-patient before her child was born healthy in September 2023. She then started her maternity leave, which was to run until March 16th that year, she said.
Dr Warren said she met the partners for lunch in January 2024 and asked them at that stage whether she could extend her maternity leave and extend her break from work with her accrued annual leave after that so that she could return later in the summer.
“I was happy to return sooner if needed,” she said.
She was asked to attend a meeting with her bosses on Friday March 1st, and was told that it was to discuss a change to the tax treatment of state payments under the GMS scheme.
“We had been talking of expanding my [GMS] list, and now we were talking of reducing my list,” she said. “The plan had been to sign a pro-rata equity partnership. Sean Montague and Andrew Lavin stated that they had never offered me pro-rata equity partnership,” Dr Warren said.
“They stated that they had never discussed partnership, and that was repeated. They also stated that an equity partnership had never been on the table,” she continued.
“The tone of the meeting was not very pleasant,” Dr Warren said. She said Dr Lavin and Ms Moran “were upset and not themselves”, and that Ms Moran had “tears in her eyes”.
“Sean Montague turned his back to me and addressed me over his shoulder. He did not have the respect to look me in the eye as he launched an unprovoked attack on my career and my professionalism,” Dr Warren said.
“[He] stated I had confidence and self-esteem issues. He stated there had been complaints. When I asked him for details of the complaints, he said he could not give details, because it would only damage my self-esteem even further. I found that offensive,” she said.
Her evidence was that no patient complaint had been formally raised with her since the year she started at the clinic in 2021, when three verbal complaints had been resolved with “no further mention”.
“It didn’t matter what I did or said: they wanted me out of Kilnacourt,” she said.
“I walked into that meeting thinking [it] was supposed to be about tax – instead, I walked into an ambush,” Dr Warren said. “With that, they dashed my hopes, my dreams, my prospects, my career,” she said.
Asked why she had not raised a formal grievance with her employers before quitting, Dr Warren said: “There was such a lack of respect and dignity and compassion, and almost intimidation at that meeting that I did not want to meet them on my own.”
She said she had since taken up work on a three-month contract with the Health Service Executive as a locum doctor, working a four-day week.
“I spent 13 weeks away from my two-year-old fighting for the life of my unborn baby. I questioned whether I had the strength to take this case. I decided my daughter shouldn’t have to grow up in a world where she could be treated like this,” Dr Warren said.
Dr Warren is expected to continue giving evidence and be cross-examined on the next date. Dr Montague, Dr Lavin and Ms Moran are also expected to testify at a later stage in the proceedings.
Adjourning the matter on Tuesday afternoon, adjudicator Roger McGrath said he would seek a date for a full-day hearing in Dublin. He said the WRC’s diaries were “full for us until mid-November” and that it was unlikely that the case would be called on again until the winter months.
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