Ex-hotel boss gets €100k at equality hearing

A FORMER hotel manager has been awarded €100,000 after the Equality Tribunal ruled that she has been discriminated and victimised by her employer after becoming pregnant.

However, Denise Batt, who worked as general manager at the Comfort Inn on Great Denmark St in Dublin, may have difficulty in receiving her compensation as the company which operated the hotel was placed in voluntary liquidation last year. The hotel now operates as the Belvedere Hotel under different management.

The tribunal ordered Palmece Ltd to pay Ms Batt €50,000 compensation for discrimination on grounds of gender and family status and a similar amount for victimisation.

It heard that Ms Batt, who worked as general manager at the hotel since 2003, had enjoyed regular bonuses and pay increases until she informed her employers in January 2006 that she was pregnant. She claimed that regular complaints about her work on trifling matters then began to be made on a daily basis.

Ms Batt also blamed work-related stress for developing the dangerous condition of pre-eclampsia during her pregnancy.

Her request to work a four-day week on her return to the hotel after maternity leave was refused, even though she had been allowed work on a similar basis several years earlier when she suffered a burst appendix.

Ms Batt also complained that she was pressurised into accepting redundancy after the ownership of the hotel was changed even though her position had not been made redundant.

The tribunal ruled that Ms Batt had established a case that she had received less favourable treatment on grounds of gender because she was pregnant and also on grounds of family status over the hotel management’s refusal to allow her parental leave when she had previously been accommodated with flexible working arrangements.

It concluded she had suffered victimisation over the manner in which the company had made her redundant.

Two separate liquidators for Palmece declined to get involved in the proceedings.

In a separate ruling, Donal Desmond was awarded €5,000 compensation after a Kildare accountancy firm withdrew an offer of an interview for a job as a bookkeeper after it became aware he was deaf.

The tribunal found that accountant, Thomas Clarke, of Newbridge, Co Kildare, had discriminated against Mr Desmond on grounds of disability.