Ireland's recent legislation on disability discrimination has been further clarified by the decisions of the Equality Officer in two cases, issued in early 2002. The first shed new light on the level of training costs that employers are obliged to bear to employ people with disabilities, and the second dealt with wheelchair access to interviews.
Two disability discrimination decisions by the Irish Equality Officer, issued in early 2002, have begun to clarify the extent to which employers are obliged to incur extra costs to accommodate people with disabilities.
Ireland's recent legislation on disability discrimination has been further clarified by the decisions of the Equality Officer in two cases, issued in early 2002. The first shed new light on the level of training costs that employers are obliged to bear to employ people with disabilities, and the second dealt with wheelchair access to interviews.
Irish disability discrimination law is based on the [Employment Equality Act 1998](http://www.odei.ie/EmploymentEquality/Employment Equality Act, 1998.htm) (IE9909144F), which is similar in many respects to the November 2000 EU Directive (2000/78/EC) establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation (EU0102295F), which is set to introduce the concept of disability discrimination to many EU Member States for the first time.
Under the Irish legislation, employers may discriminate against people with disabilities only if the cost of accommodating them in the workplace goes over a 'nominal cost'. What constitutes nominal cost was not defined in the legislation, and these cases are the first attempts by the Office of the Director of Equality Investigations to clarify the issue.
In the first case, the claimant, who suffered the after-effects of neurosurgery, was employed as a clerical worker in a local authority. Management was unhappy with his performance and after five months he was offered (and accepted) a manual post in the same authority. He subsequently left this post and now works in a clerical job in the civil service.
The Equality Officer who made the decision on the case said that the claimant could have done his original job with several months training by a personal job coach. The Officer felt that this would give rise to a cost and turned for guidance on what constituted nominal cost to parliamentary debates during the passage of the 1998 legislation and an Irish Supreme Court opinion on the legislation. This suggested that nominal cost was relative to the size of the employer. Therefore, since this particular local authority was of significant size, the cost of a job coach was 'nominal' in this case. The claimant was awarded EUR 15,000.
In the wheelchair access case, an Equality Officer awarded EUR 1,270 to a wheelchair user who could not get access to a job interview in a room on the first floor of a building, as the stair-lift was not working. The Equality Officer noted that the employer, in the health services, had not argued that the cost of having the stair-lift fixed would have given rise to other than a nominal cost. Therefore, the employer was held to have discriminated against the claimant in respect of access to the interview.
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (2002), Disability cases clarify cost issue for employers, article.
