Tag Archives: compensation

A CLARE man was awarded €20,000, after being unlawfully discriminated against on the grounds of age at a job interview.Quin man Dave Barry, who managed the Clooney-Quin senior hurlers to last year’s county final, brought a case under the Employment Equality Act against Solas, the Further Education and Training (FET) Authority in Ireland. Mr Barry was represented at the hearing by Pat O’Donoghue of SIPTU, while Katie Doyle of IBEC appeared for Solas. Mr Barry applied for and was interviewed for the position of assistant manager in the Limerick Training Centre in 2014. The complainant, who was aged 60, claimed he was asked at interview, ‘Do you think at this stage you should be taking it easier?’ The question was asked by a woman referred to only as Ms C in the published summary. The summary stated that Mr Barry said he could not sleep the night after the interview, as he felt an injustice had been done. “He submits …

A teenage girl who stabbed another girl with a stiletto heel during a drunken row after a school graduation ceremony, has been told that she faces jail if she doesn’t co-operate with the Probation Service. Judge Gerald Keys gave the warning to Shannon Jordan (19) of Lios Anama, Sixmilebridge at Ennis Circuit Court this week. In the case, Ms Jordan’s victim, Natasha Griffin McMahon – who was aged 17 at the time of the assault in August 2015 – suffered a fractured eye socket and laceration, when Jordan used the pointed heel of her shoe to strike her in the face. Ms Jordan has pleaded guilty to the assault and in her victim impact statement, Ms Griffin McMahon said that she came close to being blinded by the stiletto attack. She said the deepest cut from the stiletto “was millimetres below my eye”. “If it had been even slightly higher, I would have lost my eye completely or, at best, …

THE new Government has been urged to put in place an accessible compensation package to enable residents in South-East Clare restore their flood-hit properties. A local Sinn Féin activist has also called on the new administration to ensure that insurance companies will not be allowed to abdicate their responsibilities by compensating householders who have the necessary policy in place and should continue to give them cover in the future. In a wide-ranging address to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis on Saturday, Margaret O’Connor claimed several insurance companies are now refusing to cover people in entire regions because they are what has been described as “designated flood zones”, even though they have never been flooded or are never likely to be flooded. Prior to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, the East Clare cumann member spoke to members of the Quinlivan family in Springfield, Clonlara, who are only getting back on their feet with much work on their house still to be …

A North Clare man was discriminated against on the grounds of gender by a well-known hotel, when it allowed “a female member of staff enter the gents’ changing room while it was occupied”, it has been found, in what may be the first case of its kind in Ireland. In the extremely unusual case, The Falls Hotel was ordered to pay Lahinch man, Thomas Flanagan compensation, after it was determined that the Ennistymon hotel had discriminated against him by treating him less favourably than a woman would have been if the circumstances were reversed. Mr Flanagan contacted the director of the Equality Tribunal on May 13, 2014, claiming The Falls Hotel, Ennistymon, had discriminated against him by subjecting him to regular occurrences of a female member of staff entering the gents’ changing room of The Falls Hotel, “which resulted in his discrimination, harassment and victimisation between October 2012 and January 2014”, contrary to the Equal Status Acts 2000 and 2012. …

Hundreds of farmers in North East Clare and South Galway are in a flap over the designation of land for the protection of the hen harrier, which has rendered an estimated 9,844 acres “worthless”. Feelings are running high among landowners in the Sliabh Aughty area, which has the dubious distinction of having the largest designation to safeguard this protected species under an EU directive. As a new farming group, Irish Farmers With Designated Land (IFDL) briefed deputies and members of the Oireachtas Agricultural Committee on the difficulties that landowners are experiencing due to this designation at a meeting in Dublin this week, local farmers said they are mounting an intensive campaign for change. Frustration and anger over the Government’s decision to suspend the previous compensation scheme in 2010 due to budgetary constraints, will be voiced at a public meeting in Ballinakill, County Galway on Tuesday next at 8.30pm. Farmers’ efforts to receive adequate compensation for the devaluation of their land …

THE Injuries Board made 10,656 personal injury awards in 2013, an increase of 5.1% compared to 2012.  According to the Board’s Annual Review, published this Tuesday, the total value of these awards was €243.5m, an increase of 11.7% on the €218m awarded in 2012. As the number of accidents remains unchanged, this increase is attributed to a higher proportion of claims being processed through the board’s lower cost, non-adversarial process and also the delivery of a number of exceptionally high value awards by the Board. With 275 awards, Clare accounted for the sixth highest number of personal injury awards on a per head of population basis in 2013. The average award in Clare was €28,747 and total compensation for the county amounted to €7.9m. The Board assesses personal injury claims and makes awards relating to motor, employer and public liability accidents, without the need for litigation.  The review shows that the board’s non-adversarial model has delivered direct savings of over …