Epileptic solicitor wins €30,000 pay-out in employment discrimination case

In an anonymised ruling, Adjudication Officer Pat Brady found that the legal service provider had breached the Employment Equality Acts by refusing the accommodation.

The solicitor made six requests between March 2015 and February 2017 to work from home amid a decline in her health, but all were refused.

The solicitor’s employer unsuccessfully defended itself on the basis that an independent medical practitioner had concluded that working from home would only have a “minimal” impact on her stress and fatigue levels, which she considered to be a trigger for her epilepsy.

The adjudication officer said: “It is clear from the history of the case that the respondent had set its face firmly against accommodating the complainant, whatever argument she made and it took advantage of the ‘minimal’ impact assessment to reinforce this position without properly assessing all of the implications.

“It seemed locked into its view that the accommodation was ‘incompatible’ with her role, which is rather extreme and sounds more like a pre-determined view than one based on any evidence.

“In my view, making a minimal impact on the possibility of avoiding a life-threatening event is, to put it very mildly ‘a reasonable accommodation’. There should be a zero-risk approach in such a situation.

“The failure of the respondent at any stage to take this into account is a breach of its obligations under the Act and I find for the complainant.”