Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Joseph  Lynch

Bus Éireann

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

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

CA-00050569-001

11/05/2022

The complainant gave his evidence on affirmation.

On Friday, March 25th, 2022, the complainant boarded a bus operated by the respondent with his two-year old son, who was in a pushchair, being the second and third people to board the bus respectively, after he had encouraged others in the queue to allow a wheelchair user to board the bus before them.

The driver told him that they could not get on the bus because a passenger in a wheelchair had just boarded, and the rules did not permit a wheelchair and a pushchair to be on the bus at the same time.

He pointed to a notice setting out the number of passengers that may be carried on the bus, in an attempt to illustrate this point.

However, no such restriction relating to pushchairs is identified on this notice [copy submitted], and this bus had specific provision for both. While a wheelchair user should be prioritised if there is no other space on board a bus, that model of bus has specific space allocated for both a wheelchair (in the designated space near the luggage rack,) and also a pushchair.

The space behind the stairwell was empty, and the complainant informed the driver of this. However, in front of other passengers waiting to board, the driver continued to delay the admission of the complainant and his son on to the bus.

The complainant told the driver that he had to get on the bus because his son needed to get home, and that they had been waiting for over thirty minutes.

To make the situation even more distressing, the driver acted in a completely different manner when we arrived at a later stop. He allowed and actively assisted a second pushchair to board the bus which was in the charge of a woman, presumably the child’s mother, and which was being used by an older and clearly more mobile child than the complainant’s son.

The wheelchair passenger was still in situ, and there were many other passengers, standing and sitting, on the bus at the time. When he and his son boarded the bus earlier, the only other passenger was the passenger in the wheelchair.

The complainant says that the driver discriminated against him and his son, and they were victims of needlessandsenselessharassmentbythedriver.

A woman with a child in a pushchair was actively assisted with boarding a bus that contained a wheelchair and a pushchair already on board, yet the complainant was told bluntly that the “rules” would be breached by his presence because only a wheelchair was on the bus.

A father with a child appears to be fair game for harassment and discrimination and to be treated differently.

It is entirely unacceptable behaviour, and the complainant says that he was discriminated against and harassed on the basis of both gender and family status by the driver and therefore the company, in clear contravention of the Equal Status Acts.

He did contact the respondent some days after the incident and spoke to a customer service agent who said they were ‘disappointed’ to learn of his experience, that the behaviour was not condoned, and the driver would be interviewed. However, this was not the apology he was seeking.

The respondent did not attend the hearing.

It is clear to judge from the complainant’s persistence in pursuing this matter that it was an upsetting experience for him. The hearing took place some fourteen months after the incident.

In response to a direct question in the course of the hearing he said that his entry on the bus was delayed by about a minute or a minute and a half. This provides important context for the incident.

If the facts are as set out above (and I accept that they are) they represent an unfortunate lapse in customer service standards on the part of the respondent’s driver. However, within, at most, ninety seconds the driver had relented and agreed to admit the complainant on to the bus.

To have pursued this matter to the point of a tribunal hearing and in pursuit of an apology displays a certain lack of proportion about the significance of such a minor incident, which at one point is described as ‘needless and senseless harassment’.

The respondent has a complaints procedure which it appears the complainant availed of, but this was not concluded as he says the respondent did not follow up.

Further he says that the expressions of regret about the incident (for that is what they were) were insufficient as he wanted an apology.

The allegation of less favourable treatment is based on how the second passenger who boarded subsequently with a push chair was treated. This passenger was a woman, and the complainant is inviting a conclusion that the different treatment of him and this passenger is attributable to their gender. (He offered no evidence on the family status ground other than to say that he presumed that the second passenger was the child’s mother. In that case they had the same status.

This is mere presumption based on speculation about a single isolated incident and does not meet the threshold required to ground a breach of the Act.

One might equally speculate that had the second passenger been male the driver, perhaps chastened by his exchange with the complainant and having learned from the experience, would have acted in the same way as he did with the woman passenger.

This is a flimsy complaint at its height and falls into the category of ‘a trivial matter’ referred to in section 22 of the Act.

This important legislation was not intended to provide a remedy for a person delayed for a minute and a half (at most) in boarding a bus and following what appears to have been a brief error of judgment (or just an error) by the respondent’s employee.

The complaint is not upheld.

For the reasons set out above complaint CA-00050569-001 is not upheld.

Equal status. Access to public transport