A Cork charity shop did not discriminate against a Romanian man after refusing to serve him during a dispute over a faulty printer, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has ruled.<\/p>\n
Ciprian Constantin, who has lived in Cobh for 12 years and is a member of the Roma community, claimed he was discriminated against on the grounds of race after staff at Re-Store, operated by Cobh Youth Services CLG, refused to serve him and barred him from the shop.<\/p>\n
Mr Constantin, represented by Lorna Madden BL, instructed by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, told the WRC he had been \u201ctreated like a criminal who committed a theft\u201d.<\/p>\n
The respondent was represented by Ali Bracken Ziad BL, instructed by Charles C Daly & Co Solicitors. The dispute began after Mr Constantin bought a secondhand printer for \u20ac80.<\/p>\n
He later discovered it was password protected and returned to the shop seeking a refund or credit. The charity said he became aggressive towards staff and was refused service because of his behaviour, not his race.<\/p>\n
Shop assistant Saoirse McCarthy told the hearing Constantin warned: \u201cWell if you don\u2019t sort it now, I\u2019m going to phone my solicitor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms McCarthy asked him \u201cAre you threatening me?\u201d, to which he responded: \u201cAm I intimidating you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Manager Sheila Forde said she instructed staff not to serve Constantin until the dispute had been resolved. She said: \u201cIt was just to keep the peace while it was getting sorted.\u201d<\/p>\n
After viewing videos recorded by Mr Constantin, the adjudication officer found: \u201cThe complainant is very aggressive in the video.\u201d<\/p>\n
The officer accepted the charity\u2019s evidence that the refusal of service was prompted by concerns for staff welfare rather than Mr Constantin\u2019s race.<\/p>\n
The WRC found Mr Constantin had failed to establish a prima facie case of race discrimination and dismissed the complaint. No compensation was awarded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Cork charity shop did not discriminate against a Romanian man after refusing to serve him during a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-546082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546082","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=546082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}