The well publicised case last year in which three care workers in a nursing home were awarded a total of €150,000 for sexual harassment that was perpetrated by a resident, provides some useful reminders for employers on how sexual harassment complaints need to be managed in the workplace (ADJ- 00015039)...

Another recent case dealing with the issue of the forced retirement of a legal secretary who had 40 years service, once again highlights the difficulties that employers face in implementing retirements, when they have not established a fixed retirement age, on objective grounds, either contractually or through custom and practice (Ref ADJ - 00016645)....

A recent decision of an Adjudication Officer under the Employment Equality Acts 1998 - 2015 found that the Complainant had made a prima facie case of discrimination on grounds of gender, and had been dismissed due to her pregnancy and not due to reasons of redundancy as purported by the Respondent Company.The Complainant was awarded €14k compensation....

In a recently published decision by the Equality Tribunal (Dec- E 2015 - 121), a resource teacher was found to have been harassed on grounds of religion and also was discriminated against on grounds of association due to her son's sexual orientation....

The old cliche that any business is only as good as its people is certainly true but in practice recruitment activity is often carried out in an unstructured and haphazard manner. Spending time on effective and structured recruitment activities will ensure that employers have the right people in place in their business and do not have to spend unnecessary time and money dealing with the impact of poor recruitment decisions and lack of productivity....