The Circuit Court awarded €4,000 to C.T. and €2,000 to her niece, F.E., after finding on the balance of probabilities that they were treated unfairly at a Dunnes Stores outlet in Dublin in November 2019. The court invited the parties to address it on costs; the judgment does not record a decision on costs.
The appeals challenged a Workplace Relations Commission determination that the two women had not been discriminated against on grounds of race or ethnicity. Judge John O’Connor heard the appeals together because they arose from the same event. The judgment, delivered on 18 May 2023, does not specify a further order beyond the compensation awards and invitation on costs.
C.T. told the court she was prevented from paying for groceries after a security officer approached her at the checkout. She said he accused her of begging and made a profane remark. F.E. said the officer asked her to leave and accused them of stealing. The officer denied using profanity and said he asked C.T. to leave because she had previously been barred for approaching customers to ask them to buy food. He said he had no interaction with F.E.
The judge found that C.T. was prevented from paying for groceries and that the incident differed from how other shoppers would have been treated. He accepted F.E.’s evidence that, as a teenager, she felt unable to continue her purchase and found that this was a reasonable assumption in the circumstances.
The court did not accept C.T.’s claims that the officer grabbed or mishandled her arm or used foul language. It also recognised inconsistencies in her evidence. The judge said the officer believed he had acted correctly, but found that the respondent’s records of alleged previous incidents were inadequate. Disclosure had included an incident report relating to another person and another incident; the only commonality identified by the judge was that person’s ethnic origin and C.T.’s.
The judgment recommended that Dunnes avoid relying on instinct or memory to identify people previously barred, keep records of alleged incidents, provide adequate equality training, consider a confidential internal complaint process and offer an apology where appropriate. These were recommendations, not orders. The judgment does not state that the store was required to implement them.