A Malaysian doctor who claimed he was discriminated against on the grounds of race while working at one of the biggest hospitals in the State has won an employment equality case.
St James's Hospital in Dublin has been ordered to pay Dr Bennet Eng (26) about €38,000 in back pay and allowances by the Office of the Director of Equality Investigations, which ruled in the case.
In the first racial discrimination case to be succesfully taken by an employee, an equality officer ruled that it was unlawful for Dr Eng to work as an intern without a basic salary when Irish intern colleagues doing like work were in salaried positions.
Dr Eng, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, worked for nine months in 2000 and 2001 as an unpaid intern in St James's.
A specific number of funded intern posts are available to medical graduates every year in the State's main hospitals. If the number of graduates exceeds the number of posts offered, the remainder are allocated unpaid intern positions.
However, if an Irish doctor or one from the European Economic Area - the 12 EU states and Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein - does not have sufficient exam qualifications for a funded post, non-EEA graduates can be displaced from paid posts to make way for EEA gradutates.
In Dr Eng's case, an EU graduate who was ranked lower than him on merit was allocated a paid internship post.
The hospital contended that this system was justified, as it was obliged to offer paid intern jobs to EEA nationals who did not require work permits before offering them to non-EEA nationals who did.
The hospital also maintained that this system was necessary to meet the requirements of the Treaty of Rome, which provides for equal treatment for workers within the EEA.
The equality officer ruled that the treaty did not, by corrollary, oblige employers to discriminate against non-EU nationals and that national law governed the rights and entitlements of third-country nationals resident here.
The hospital had not submitted "any valid ground other than nationality for the non-payment of basic salary" to Dr Eng, the ruling states.
A spokesperson for St James's Hospital said it had a long track record as an equal opportunity employer. "We have proactively recruited people on ability from many different parts of the world and the evidence is there from the multi-ethnic workforce within the hospital."
The hospital had not ruled out appealing the judgment, he added.