A Roma woman with a sick child who had to argue with a security guard to be let buy medicine at a pharmacy after he tried to turn her away at the door has won €800 for racial discrimination.
Claudia Tanase secured the award against Boots Retail (Ireland) Ltd on foot of her complaint of racial discrimination in breach of the Equal Status Act 2000, which was upheld by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) in a decision published on Friday.
An equality hearing in June was told Tanase went to the Boots store on Henry Street, Dublin 1, on October 3rd, 2024, to buy medicine for her sick child, who was with her.
In her account of the incident, Tanase said a security guard “refused her entry on the basis of her Roma ethnicity”.
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The worker went on to say he had been “told not to admit members of the Roma community”, Tanase told the WRC.
A “heated exchange” followed, and Tanase began recording what was taking place, it was submitted on her behalf.
The WRC noted that this footage clearly recorded the security guard making a remark about “trouble with you people”.
Following this interaction, Tanase was let go to the pharmacy counter to buy the medicine, before being then directed to leave the premises, it was further submitted.
The position of Boots was that Tanase had been refused entry at first for “non-discriminatory reasons”.
Kate Conneely, appearing for the pharmacy and instructed by Ursula Cullen of Miley & Miley Solicitors, argued Tanase was “subject to scrutiny” at Boots because of past involvement in “antisocial behaviour at the premises”.
Boots had “never issued instructions to restrict entry on any discriminatory ground”, Conneely added.
Counsel pointed to a past WRC case in which Tanase failed to secure a finding of discrimination against Dunnes Stores after accusing it of denying her service in 2019. This decision from the WRC in 2022 was however overturned on appeal to the Circuit Court in 2023 and she was awarded €4,000.*
Solicitor Sinead Lucey of the Free Legal Advice Centre (Flac), for Tanase, argued the credibility of Boots was undermined by the “inconsistency” of its explanations.
Boots had “shifted from having no recollection of the incident to alleging [Tanase] was suspected of antisocial behaviour”, an inconsistency which undermined its credibility, she submitted.
Lucey argued that the case was particularly serious discrimination, submitting that Tanase was “a concerned parent” left “upset and humiliated by being singled out”.
Her client was “frustrated and angry upon concluding that the treatment received was connected to ethnicity”, Lucey submitted.
Restricting access to an essential public service such as a pharmacy was more serious than to an ordinary retail shop, she added.
In his decision, adjudication officer Dónal Moore wrote that the CCTV footage before him showed Tanase was “provocative” during the interaction and bore some responsibility for its “escalation”.
He concluded there was “no substive evidence” shown to him that the complainant was barred from the Boots store for antisocial behaviour.
“Had such evidence existed, I do not doubt that it would have been placed before me,” he wrote.
He ruled that the claims by Boots about antisocial behaviour were “unsupported by evidence” and that it had failed to rebut the inference of discrimination she had raised.
However, the adjudicator disagreed with Flac’s argument that it was discrimination “on the higher end of the scale”.
He awarded €800 in compensation for discrimination, a little over 5 per cent of the maximum jurisdiction under the Equal Status Act, calling this “proportionate and sufficiently dissuasive”.
He also gave a direction that Boots “ensure that all security personnel assigned to its premises receive appropriate briefing or training in the requirements of the Equal Status Acts”.
* This article was amended on October 1st to clarify that Tanase appealed the WRC ruling in her case against Dunnes Stores to the Circuit Court and won. This information has come to light in recent days.
