Employment equality legislation in Ireland: claimants, representation and outcomes

This paper seeks to identify, for the first time, trends in claimant use of the Irish Employment Equality Acts 1998–2008. Specifically, we examine types of claimant representation, the sectoral origin of claims and the outcomes of equality cases. Our findings are based on an analysis of 434 employment equality cases decided by the Equality Tribunal in the seven-year period 2001–07 and interviews with key informants from equality bodies and trade unions. We find that there is a high failure rate of complainants’ cases, that success rates vary across types of representation and that a disproportionate number of claimants are from the public sector.