The number of complaints to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) last year, in which discrimination was alleged against businesses and workplaces, was up significantly on the previous year, according to newly-published figures.
The number of complaints made under the Employment Equality Acts, relating to claims of discrimination or failure to provide appropriate accommodations to workers with disabilities, was up 52 per cent in 2025, from 410 to 622.
The figure grows again when 293 disability complaints – taken over goods and services – are taken into consideration.
The number of worker complaints has almost doubled since 2023, when there were 331. Last year’s figure represented almost a third of all complaints made to the WRC under the Acts, which provide for cases to be taken on a total of nine grounds, including age, gender and sexual orientation.
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Widely reported cases involving findings of discrimination under the “disability” heading took place as recently as the past week. In one case, Lidl was ordered to pay €28,000 to a warehouse worker sent home after being told there were no light duties for him to perform when he returned from time off for a hernia operation.
An award of €30,000 was made in a case involving a senior civil servant at the Department of Social Protection for a failure to make accommodations in relation to a visual impairment. A sales worker found to have been discriminated against on grounds of both age and disability was awarded €106,000.
The number of complaints of discrimination relating to family status and gender was up 32 per cent and 24 per cent respectively. There was a 31 per cent increase in those citing religion as the factor involved, although this compared with a small comparative base the previous year.
Complaints taken under the Equal Status Acts relate to allegations of discrimination to the provision of goods, services and accommodation.
Here, disability accounted for about a quarter of all cases, with numbers up by 53 per cent on 2024, from 192 to 293 last year.
One reason for the dramatic number in cases, an employment lawyer suggests, is greater levels of awareness in terms of the obligations created by the relevant legislation.
Gender, family status and civil status were the other categories to show substantial increases – 49 per cent, 36 per cent and 29 per cent respectively – while the number of complaints relatting to the treatment of members of the Travelling community by businesses dropped by more than half to 105
Race was the second most commonly-cited factor last year when it came to equal-status complaints, with 236 complaints in 2025. This was up from 105 in 2023 and represented a 10 per cent increase on 2024.
In its annual report for 2025, the WRC says it pursued through the courts 223 cases relating to breaches of various Acts last year, with 183 convictions obtained.
A total of 78 businesses or owners received convictions. Some of these were in relation to multiple transgressions, but almost a third of the total – 59 of the 183 offences – involved abuses of the Employment Permits Acts, which provide for workers from outside the EU and EEA to be employed in Ireland. A substantial number of the businesses were in the food sector.
