A Department of Education schools inspector who claimed her employers discriminated against her by refusing to facilitate her in the pursuit of academic studies has lost her case at the Equality Tribunal. A female Aer Arann employee also lost her discrimination case.
Ms Mary Meaney, a district schools inspector based in Sligo, claimed the Department of Education discriminated against her on the basis of her gender and marital and family status.
The alleged discrimination concerned her application for a transfer or career break, the redistribution of a retired colleague's workload and the way travel and subsistence expenses were reimbursed.
Ms Meaney took up the post as a district inspector with the Department in September 1998. The following month she wrote to the deputy chief inspector saying she wished to be placed near a university as she intended pursuing postgraduate studies. This letter was not acknowledged, she claimed.
In May 1999 she was transferred from Galway to Sligo and had to forgo a place for postgraduate studies in University College Galway in 1999.
Ms Meaney applied for a career break for the following academic year, October 2000 to May 2001, but this request was refused and the application for a transfer was ignored, she claimed.
Female employees were often required to relocate when males were not, Ms Meaney contended.
She also claimed that single female inspectors were often assigned to an office far from home, while male and married female inspectors were rarely given long-distance assignments. Ms Meaney's home was in Westport while she was based in Sligo.
An equality officer, Mr Gerardine Coyle, said she found "no valid claim" in the matter of travel expenses. Ms Meaney was not discriminated against in that way.
Ms Meaney had failed to lodge her other complaints within six months of the incidents occurring. They therefore fell outside the remit of the Equality Tribunal, Ms Coyle said.
A female Aer Arann employee also lost her discrimination case at the tribunal yesterday.
Ms Dolores Rogers, who was employed in an administrative capacity by Aer Arann from May 1999 to December 2000, lost her claim for equal pay with three male colleagues. She claimed she was entitled to the same pay as the three men as she did work of equal value and that she had been discriminated against on the grounds of her sex.
Ms Coyle found that Ms Rogers did not perform "like work" with each of the three men and was therefore not entitled to equal pay.
