Equality Officer awards €70k compensation to born-again Christian

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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Born-again Christian awarded €70,000 in discrimination case

According to the council, John McAteer was dismissed after repeatedly failing to comply with senior staff members who told him to stop speaking about his faith to workers and members of the public during office hours.
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The equality officer Marian Duffy noted that European charters on human rights and freedoms protect a right to manifest one’s religion and, therefore, the manifestation of religion is covered within the Employment Equality Acts.
Ms Duffy said she was satisfied the “treatment of the complainant and the monitoring of him by council staff directly related to his religious beliefs and the manifestation of these beliefs”.
She said the ban placed on him from sharing his faith between 9am and 5pm impacted disproportionately on people of his religious fate.
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I must say that I would be greatly offended if I was trying to interact with a council engineer and he tried to talk to be about This post will be deleted if not edited immediately.

I presume that the Council can appeal this?
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I presume that the Council can appeal this?
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I certainly hope they do. He wasn't doing his job; he was talking about his interests during the working day instead of doing his job. If he spent the day talking about fishing or football instead of doing his job then there would have been in the same boat.
 
Human rights are very important, fundamental to society.

Every person has a right to be respected for what they are, black, white, male, female, or any other aspect of what god or nature made them.

I have never understood why this right is extended to religion. People choose what to believe, and many of the things people choose to believe when put into practise affect other people.

People can believe all they want in the supernatural, but when that belief causes them to act against the welfare of others it should not be supported by law.
 
This reminds me of a guy I worked with a few years ago. Used to come to work with a bible and have it with him everywhere, even into meetings. In fairness he didn't preach his gospel or anything but he went to the church every day at lunch time. The ironic thing was that he was a two-faced, hang man and a right evil piece of work!!
 
Purple said:
He wasn't doing his job; he was talking about his interests during the working day instead of doing his job. If he spent the day talking about fishing or football instead of doing his job then there would have been in the same boat.
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+1

The world has gone crazy.
 
Firefly said:
This reminds me of a guy I worked with a few years ago. Used to come to work with a bible and have it with him everywhere, even into meetings. In fairness he didn't preach his gospel or anything but he went to the church every day at lunch time. The ironic thing was that he was a two-faced, hang man and a right evil piece of work!!
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I worked with a guy in the Bank of Ireland who took a couple of young girls aside in the office who were recently engaged and spoke to them about not using contraception. He had about 8 children himself and was very "Catholic". Like Firefly colleague above he was quite a nasty individual if you didn't agree with him. He was one of the reasons I left the Bank of Ireland to go work elsewhere.
 
You'll get a free travel pass and 1 for your companion also...so have a milkshake with that mars bar
 
michaelm said:
They should be able to appeal it to the Labour Court. They seem willing to overturn obviously dubious awards such as here [broken link removed] (must click YES to view the article)
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They will I'm sure but it means another day out of the office, plus time preparing for it. We had one a few years ago which we lost and I was astounded at the outcome.

The EO seemed to be of the view that the HSE owed the employee a living.
 
demoivre said:
He should have been sacked and told to join the Jehovah's Witnesses. :rolleyes:
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I would have loved to have worked with him. I love arguing with the delusional. I'm not sure which one of us would have been sacked first though.
 
Purple said:
I would have loved to have worked with him. I love arguing with the delusional. I'm not sure which one of us would have been sacked first though.
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Faith, by its nature, means you can't prove it. So, where DID we come from, smarty-pants? :p
 
Firefly said:
Faith, by its nature, means you can't prove it. So, where DID we come from, smarty-pants? :p
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I have faith that science will tell us some day.
I have certainty that even now it tell us more than the filtered and fragmented remains of Bronze Age tribal writings.
 
Firefly said:
Faith, by its nature, means you can't prove it. So, where DID we come from, smarty-pants? :p
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I came from Cork.

Or if you prefer most of the atoms in my body were formed as a result of nuclear fusion in distant stars billions of years ago. An inspiring story and not even made up.
 
cremeegg said:
Or if you prefer most of the atoms in my body were formed as a result of nuclear fusion in distant stars billions of years ago. An inspiring story and not even made up.
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Doesn't really explain it though does it? Everyone accepts the big bang theory (even the Catholic Church) but it doesn't explain how the conditions for the big bang exisited does it?!

I am sure science and the laws of physics will give us the answers eventually but then were did the law of physics comes from? Can something really be created from nothing?

Now I am off to say my prayers to my numerous God's.
 
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