Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Roman  Argutinski

Odessa Estates Property Ltd O'Dea

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

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

CA-00033751-001

06/12/2019

The complainant says he was discriminated against by the respondent.

He visited the respondent on a number of dates seeking her assistance with an application for rent allowance but was told not  to call to her again. The purpose of his visit had been to have a document signed to enable him to apply for rent supplement.

The complainant give evidence on affirmation and said and accepted that he was told that the respondent was no longer the letting agent.

However, she would not provide him with contact details for the landlord. When eventually contacted the landlord, he would not sign the rental allowance form until May of the following year.

He also referred to documentation which indicated that this respondent had a continuing role in relation to the property.

The respondent also give evidence on affirmation.

She confirmed that her engagement with the landlord was terminated on August 23rd, 2019.

She did continue as a rent collecting agent, and this ultimately terminated when the property was put on the market for sale.

She said that at that time the complainant undertook to act as a  representative of other tenants, and he overwhelmed her with correspondence. But she stated that she never had any responsibility for maintenance at the property once she was no longer engaged as the letting agent.

She gave the complainant and the other tenants bank account details for the purpose of collecting the rent in August 2019 but advised that all forms would have to be signed by the landlord.

She ensured that all tenants had the correct telephone number for the landlord.

However, the complainant was not happy with this arrangement and bombarded her account with emails critical of property ownership in Ireland, the landlord, termination and other issues. She had to go to the trouble and expense to get IT experts to clear out the volume of emails received.

Regarding the rent allowance application, she was asked to sign she said that she could not do so under the terms of her license with the PRSA. She had no legal status that would empower her to act in such a capacity.

There is a preliminary issue here as to whether the respondent is correctly identified. The complainant referred to a number of dates when he approached the respondent commencing on September 13th, 2019, followed by two more visits on the 27th and 30th, and again on October 2nd and 21st.

Written evidence was submitted confirming that the property owner terminated the engagement with the respondent on August 23rd, 2019, when the property was put on the market and ending an eighteen-year working arrangement between them.

This happened in advance of all the dates on which the complainant says he sought the respondent’s cooperation.

The respondent’s evidence was that she told the complainant of this, and the complainant accepted in his evidence that he had been told.

Quite why he persisted with his continued attempts to get the respondent to act when she had made it clear that she could not is perhaps explained by his misunderstanding of the continuing role in rent collection.

Based on these facts, no prima facie case has been made out of any breach of the Act by this respondent.

The complaint is therefore not well founded.

For the reasons set out above complaint CA-00033751-001 is not well founded.

Discrimination. Rent Allowance