TWO MEMBERS OF the Roma community have been awarded a total of €6,000 compensation against Dunnes Stores after a judge ruled they had been discriminated against on the grounds of race and ethnicity.

The Free Legal Advice Centre (FLAC) said this is the first decision of its kind concerning the Roma Community and access to shops, which sets an important precedent in light of the “rampant discrimination” suffered by the Roma community.

Judge John O’Connor, in a reserved judgment in the Circuit Civil Court, told barrister Kate O’Loughlin, who appeared for the two Romanian nationals, that he accepted her clients, an aunt and her niece, had been asked to leave Dunnes in Dublin’s Talbot Street.

The women (one of whom was a minor at the time of the incident) went to the till to pay for their groceries. Dunnes Stores argued that one of the women had previously been barred from the shop for begging, which the woman denied, but the store was not able to provide any record of this or any evidence of previous incidents involving the women.

Judge O’Connor said both ladies had been dressed in their traditional attire and had been accordingly identifiable as being members of a specific ethnic group. 

The judge said, in deciding the couple’s appeal from a decision of the Workplace Relations Commission, that the security officer had told him there were no formal procedures in place for barring individuals from the store.

Judge O’Connor said the only form of identifying a barred individual on a subsequent visit to the store was by way of memory.

“The shortcomings of such informal procedures were evident in that there was an issue of mistaken identity relating to the Incident Report forms submitted by Dunnes in response to the claim,” Judge O’Connor said.

He said that when requested by way of data access request for all records held by Dunnes pertaining to the appellants, the minimal records provided demonstrated a lack of any sufficient system by which to keep track of members of the public who were allegedly barred and thus prevent misidentification.

Dunnes, which denied having discriminated against the women, claimed they had established that the reason the aunt had been asked to leave the store was for the sole reason that she had been barred. Her niece had not been requested to leave nor had she been told she was barred as she had alleged.

Judge O’Connor said there had been a failure to properly record previous alleged incidents and significantly there had been a mix up in the discovery documentation disclosed by Dunnes which related to a different person and a different incident.

The court suggested a number of recommendations to assist in setting up a system that if addressed by Dunnes (or any other shop or similar entity) might assist in avoiding or at least mitigating a recurrence of such incidents.

• Security officers should avoid making assumptions and relying on instinct or memory alone when alleged previous incidents arose.
• There should be a record of previous incidents and an awareness of the problem that identity was frequently a genuine issue.
• There should be awareness of the challenges and obstacles that a minority ethnic person could endure in shopping.
• Where a shopper felt they had been discriminated against an internal objectively based complaint handling mechanism option should apply.
• An apology, in appropriate circumstances, could go a long way to mitigate any potential damage.

Judge O’Connor said the actions of the two Romanian women, one of whom was under age at the time, were consistent with persons who honestly felt aggrieved that they had been treated unfairly and that their complaints fell within the Equal Status Act.

He awarded the aunt €4,000 and her niece €2,000 and agreed with O’Loughlin, who appeared with Sinead Lucey of FLAC, that the two women were entitled to their legal costs.

On the question of identity Judge O’Connor said most everyone had been in a situation where they had embarrassed themselves in thinking they recognized someone to only find it was a mistake.