A CHALLENGE by Iarnród Éireann to an equality officer’s decision to award one of its employees €189,000 over gender discrimination of her by the company was dismissed by a High Court judge yesterday as “devoid of merit”.
Mr Justice John Hedigan ruled that the company’s application to quash equality officer Orlaith Mannion’s award to Iarnród Éireann’s senior marketing department officer, Monica Murphy, was “devoid of merit either in law or on the facts.”
He also refused an application from Iarnród Éireann to stay his decision to award legal costs against the company. It was “about time some reality dawned on Irish Rail in the way this case was conducted ,” he said.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Hedigan criticised the company’s failure to produce documentation which Ms Mannion had sought before she made her decision last November that Ms Murphy had been discriminated against.
Iarnród Éireann had argued Ms Mannion should not have drawn inferences from its failure to supply certain documents relating to Ms Murphy’s case.
The documents related mainly to the failure to provide Ms Murphy with a budget for her marketing role when two male colleagues did have budgets. The company had claimed the equality officer should, if necessary, have gone to the Circuit Court to get the information she had sought from it before she made her decision.
Mr Justice Hedigan said the inference drawn by the equality officer over budgets was “inevitable and beyond criticism” and that finding, on its own, disposed of Iarnród Éireann’s case.
The drawing of inferences is “a legitimate part of any decision making process”, he said.
Although there were limits to this, there was an obligation on the party complaining about the inferences to show they were not properly made and were clearly wrong. Iarnród Éireann had failed to do this, he said. The documentation involved had never been produced although it was central to the matter.