Irish law is one of the few examples where associated discrimination is explicitly stated in the legal text. The main pieces of anti-discrimination legislation are the Employment Equality Acts (1998-2004) and the Equal Status Acts (2000-2004).

According to Art. 6 para. 1(b) of the Employment Equality Act and Art. 3(1)(b) of the Equal Status Act, discrimination occurs when a person who is associated with another person is treated less favourably on the basis of that association in a comparable situation than a person who is not associated with that person.

The cases of Battles v The Killarney Heights Hotel, Marron v Board of Management of St Paul’s National School and O’Brien v Dunnes Stores exemplify Irish rulings on direct associational discrimination. In Battles v The Killarney Heights Hotel, the husband, Tom Battles, was subjected to associational discrimination because of his close relationship to his partner, Veronica. Veronica, unlike her partner, is part of the Traveller community.

On the 17^th of May 2003, the couple wanted to visit the premises of the hotel to spend the evening in the restaurant. However, they were denied access. The hotel based the decision on a chain of circumstances that had occurred previously and denied the existence of discrimination. It argued that Travellers had previously turned up uninvited at a wedding at the hotel. In addition, another Traveller broke into one of the hotel rooms.

However, the hotel confirmed that the complainants did not know these people. Nonetheless, the hotel stated that there were problems with them as well, as they sometimes refused to leave the premises despite closing time. Still, there was no ban or other serious misconduct. Nevertheless, according to the hotel “domestic order” had to be maintained, which was no longer guaranteed due to the previous incidents. In addition, there were already eight to twelve Travellers in the hotel on that day.

After examining the case, an Equality Officer found that Tom Battles had been discriminated against on the grounds of his close relationship with his partner. There was a breach of Art. 3(1)(b) of the Equal Status Act. The Commissioner argued, inter alia, that a person who did not have a close relationship with a Traveller would probably have been admitted to the hotel that evening. As a result, the hotel had to pay Tom Battles 650 euros compensation. The hotel was also ordered to require staff to comply with the Equal Status Act 2000.

In the 2015 case of Bernadette Marron v St Paul’s National School, another case of associated discrimination was upheld. This involved a teacher whose son is homosexual. She was also caring for her father, who was in need of care, and therefore needed to be as flexible as possible in her working life. However, the headmaster of the respondent’s school did not grant her the necessary flexibility, for example by not providing her with her own key to the premises. However, other employees of the school were granted this.

The headmaster made several derogatory comments about the sexual orientation of the complainant’s son. Among other things, he did not refer to him as a “normal boy” because he liked to spend his time buying clothes. Through an artificially protracted administrative process, the teacher’s complaint was not dealt with until she responded with legal assistance.

As a result, the school was ordered to pay compensation in the amount of 3,000 euros, whereby other forms of discrimination were present in addition to the associated discrimination.

The detailed case report can be found here.