The “beep test”, a standard aerobic fitness test for prospective firefighters for the last 40 years, discriminates against women and advantages younger candidates, a tribunal has found, following a legal challenge by a prospective recruit.<\/p>\n
Cork Fire Brigade has been ordered to pay \u20ac8,000 in compensation to Ter\u00e9zia Foott, a part-time firefighter aged in her 40s who failed to advance in a November 2023 recruitment competition for a full-time post because she did not make the cut.<\/p>\n
Ms Foott, a qualified sports therapist and personal trainer, said she passed every element of the fitness test on the day on 17 November 2023.<\/p>\n
She was already working with Cork County Fire and Rescue as a part-time firefighter, engine driver and mechanic, and was subject to aerobic fitness testing every three years to stay in the job.<\/p>\n
The “beep test”, the tribunal heard, consists of a timed shuttle run where candidates must repeatedly dash a set distance, keeping time with a recorded beep track, getting faster and faster each time until they fail to hit their mark and fall out, or complete the course.<\/p>\n
Cork City\u2019s Chief Fire Officer David Spillet said the beep test had been used in Cork since the 1980s.<\/p>\n
“There is no separate standard for males and females; the same fitness requirements apply to all candidates to ensure they are capable, fit, and healthy for operational duties,” he told the Workplace Relations Commission.<\/p>\n
However, he said testing methods could vary from service to service.<\/p>\n
The minimum score was 9.6 shuttles, which equated to oxygen consumption, VO2 max, of 42ml\/kg the WRC was told.<\/p>\n
Ms Foott\u2019s case was that on the day, she was held to the same standard as the man in his 20s who completed the beep test alongside her on the day.<\/p>\n
Her score on the day equated to 37.4ml\/kg VO2 max, which was “at the highest edge of the \u2018above average\u2019 category\u2019” for aerobic performance for a 43-year-old woman.<\/p>\n
She told the tribunal that she went for a VO2 Max test in Dublin the week after the Cork Fire Brigade trials and registered a VO2 max of 45.2ml\/kg.<\/p>\n
Ms Foott said a different test, the Chester treadmill test, was in use in her current job.<\/p>\n
Mr Spillet said the fire brigade used the beep test because it was “practical for group assessments”.<\/p>\n
The complainant\u2019s position was that the beep test was “cheap and dirty” as a way of assessing aerobic capacity compared to other methods.<\/p>\n
She said she asked the fire service to let her take a retest on a gaseous exchange machine on a treadmill, but the Cork City Council human resources officers in charge of the recruitment competition turned her down, she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Foott was told she could retake the test on another day with another fire service, an option the complainant turned down, the tribunal heard.<\/p>\n
Adjudication officer \u00dana Glazier-Farmer upheld Ms Foott\u2019s complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998.<\/p>\n
She ruled that the use of the timed shuttle and other standards for as a run as a “one-size-fits-all” standard without grading on a normative curve to consider age and gender was indirectly discriminatory.<\/p>\n
“The respondent openly acknowledged in its evidence that there was no separate standard for males and females, and that the same fitness requirements applied to all candidates,” she noted.<\/p>\n
In Ms Foott\u2019s case, the beep test used by Cork Fire Brigade “was both directly discriminatory towards the complainant and indirectly discriminatory against women, while giving younger candidates a distinct advantage”, Ms Glazier-Farmer wrote.<\/p>\n
She directed payment of \u20ac4,000 for gender discrimination and a further \u20ac4,000 for age discrimination.<\/p>\n
CW Ashe and Co Solicitors appeared for Ms Foott in the case and Cork City Council was represented by the Local Government Management Agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The “beep test”, a standard aerobic fitness test for prospective firefighters for the last 40 years, discriminates against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-288973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}