Industrial Tribunals Northern Ireland Decisions

 


FAIR EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL

CASE REF NO: 453/97FET

APPLICANT: Steven Keery

RESPONDENT: Police Authority for Northern Ireland

DECISION

The unanimous decision of the Tribunal is to dismiss this application.

APPEARANCES:

APPLICANT: The applicant appeared without representation.

RESPONDENT: Mrs N Murnaghan, Barrister-at-Law, instructed by the Crown Solicitor.

1. The applicant applied for the post of traffic warden with the respondent but was not shortlisted for interview. He alleged that the reason he was not shortlisted for interview related to his religious belief/political opinion. In particular he was not shortlisted because there was a decision to appoint a quota of Roman Catholic candidates because of an imbalance in Roman Catholic employees of the respondent. The respondent denied discrimination and alleged that candidates were shortlisted on merit.
2. The respondent did not shortlist the applicant. They called as witnesses all of the persons involved in the shortlisting exercise. Each of those witnesses denied treating the applicant less favourably on the grounds of his religious belief/political opinion. Despite attention being drawn to it by the chairman, the applicant did not contradict any of those witnesses and allege that he/she had discriminated against him. He produced no evidence of the operation of a 'quota of Roman Catholics' at shortlisting. He adduced no evidence of anyone other than the respondent's witnesses having an input into the shortlisting process. The statistics produced by the applicant in themselves do not prove discrimination at shortlisting.
3. It is not for this Tribunal to investigate the assessments of a shortlisting panel over and above the issues raised by the applicant. This Tribunal had reservations about the respondent's assessment of the applicant vis-à-vis their assessment of candidate 136 but the applicant did not challenge the shortlisters when they denied discrimination. He did not challenge either of them even after his failure to do so was drawn to his attention. Rather he alleged that discrimination arose when the administrator and the Equal Opportunities Officer decided to raise the shortlisting pass mark from 8 to 9 because of the large number eligible for shortlisting and the small number of posts. The applicant scored 8.
4. When the administrator and the Equal Opportunities Officer gave evidence, the applicant did not challenge their outright denials of discrimination and refrained from doing so even when that was pointed out to him. He then alleged that others discriminated against him by 'asterisking' two of the successful candidates' application forms. The respondent's unchallenged evidence was that this marking did not occur before or during the shortlisting process.
5. On the evidence presented to the Tribunal, the Tribunal could not find discrimination by the respondent before or during the shortlisting process because the applicant did not allege that anyone involved in that process discriminated against him. Accordingly his application is dismissed.

____________________________________

J E MAGUIRE

President

Date and place of hearing: 7/8 October 2002, Belfast

Date decision recorded in register and issued to parties: