adj-00035225

Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A Complainant

A TD

Representatives

Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisors

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 21 Equal Status Act, 2000

CA-00045912-001

01/05/2021

The complainant alleges discrimination on grounds of disability in relation to the provision of goods and services when the respondent failed to acknowledge receipt of a submission on proposed legislation and failed to act on that submission. By written submission dated 24 March 2022 the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisors requested that the complaint be dismissed as frivolous, vexatious, and misconceived. All written submissions and comments on same were exchanged between the parties.

The complainant sent the respondent confidential files and a submission on the Regulated Professions (Health and Social Care) Amendment Bill 2019 which was signed into law in October 2020 by the President. The submission was based on a health and safety risk to public patients. A TD is elected by the public and has: (a) a duty to acknowledge submissions; (b) a responsibility to report and act on health and safety issues; and (c) a duty to act in the best interest of the public. The respondent failed to acknowledge the submission. The respondent has allowed, by not acting, an unjust amendment to be brought into law and has condoned increased clinical risk and endangerment of life in patient care.

It was submitted on behalf of the respondent that the Workplace Relations Commission does not have jurisdiction to investigate this complaint on the grounds that: (1) the complaint is non-justiciable; (2) the respondent is an elected member of Dáil Éireann and in carrying out their parliamentary functions is not providing a service within the meaning of the Acts; and (3) the complainant failed to comply with s 21 of the Equal Status Acts, 2000 - 2015. The complaint should be dismissed in accordance with s 22 of the Acts on the grounds that the complaint is frivolous, vexatious, and misconceived.

I must be satisfied of my jurisdiction to investigate this complaint by reference to the relevant legislation and the nature of the complaint.

The Law

Equal Status Acts 2000-2005 (“the Acts”)

The Acts prohibit discrimination in the provision of goods and services on ten protected grounds, namely, gender, marital status, family status, age, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, membership of the traveller community and in respect of being in receipt of housing assistance (in the context of the provision of accommodation).  There is an onus on a complainant seeking redress under the Acts to establish that they sought to access a service or obtain goods from the respondent that was available to the public generally, and that in so doing they were discriminated on one or more of the protected grounds.

Dismissal of claims

Section 22(1) of the Acts provides as follows:

S 22.—(1) “The Director of the Workplace Relations Commission may dismiss a claim at any stage if of opinion that it has been made in bad faith or is frivolous, vexatious or misconceived or relates to a trivial matter.”

Section 22 of the Acts allows for the filtering of complaints prior to a hearing or at any stage of proceedings. In Nowak v The Data Protection Commissioner [2016] IESC 18 at page 6, the court stated that “[a]ny public decision maker must have the capacity to screen claims and exclude at an early stage those which are plainly misconceived”.

The meaning and scope of the word ‘misconceived’ was considered by the High Court in Keane v The Minister of Justice (1994) 3 IR 347. In this case it was found that a claim is misconceived if it is incorrectly based in law i.e., the claim is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the legislation inter alia.

Findings:

This complaint relates to the making of a submission to the respondent in relation to the legislative process and the alleged inaction of the respondent in failing to acknowledge the submission and in allowing legislation to come into effect which the complainant believes poses a public health risk. Reading this complaint in as expansive manner as possible, I am satisfied that this complaint does not fall within the remit of the Equal Status Acts.  The complaint is based on a misunderstanding of the Acts.

CA-00045912-001

I dismiss the complaint as misconceived in accordance with s 22 of the Acts.

Misconceived.