A mental health worker, who was described as a "mad f***er" by a charity secretary in an unsent email, has been awarded €13,000 by the Workplace Relations Commission on grounds of discrimination regarding access to employment.
However, the secretary of the charity, who wrote the draft email, submitted to the WRC that this term was used "affectionately" and referred to the commitment being shown by the complainant in setting up a health project.
The complaint of discrimination was taken against the trustees of the charity.
In 2019, the complainant designed a mental health project in a town in the west of Ireland aimed at providing services at a café-centre, available on a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week basis.
The complainant worked on the project in 2019 and 2020 and received State funding for that period but developed the project more throughout 2021 without being paid.
As the project developed in mid-to-late 2021, the HSE advised the complainant that to become operational, the project would need to pair with an existing mental health charity - the respondent - and this course of action was agreed in December 2021.
It was submitted that in June 2022, the complainant discovered that despite him warning the charity six months earlier to register the correct board members with the Charity Regulator, this had not been done when the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed in February 2022.
He argued that the HSE had thus been misinformed.
This ultimately led the HSE to declare in June 2022 that the MoU was null and void and the centre never opened.
The complainant submitted that he advised the charity by email in April 2022 that he was taking time off from the project, stating that he "could no longer absorb the uniquely damaging knocks and bangs the project seems to be creating on an hourly basis."
He requested "time to replenish and repair."
The next month, the charity's secretary emailed the HSE with an attached draft letter, which she intended to send to the complainant. The complainant only became aware of the draft letter by way of a Freedom of Information search.
The secretary stated her belief that the complainant's "erratic" behaviour was due to him working intensely without reward but also because the complainant was distressed by "past experiences".
She further stated that before he could return to work he needed "to accept and forgive his behaviours that had led him to the distressed state."
In the draft letter, the secretary stated: "I love everything I do and every mad f***er I meet, including yourself. But I currently have no desire to go back into a working relationship with you in your current distressed state."
She recommended that he take a break and return when he was more "refreshed with a stable foundation for the future."
The complainant contended that the use of the expression "mad f***er" in relation to him was a discriminatory slur. It was submitted that this was a "derogatory" way of describing a person with mental health challenges, which the secretary had no basis to believe or say about the complainant.
The letter was never sent as the HSE advised that it should not be issued. The complainant submitted that thereafter no offer of employment at any level was received by him even though the board were in favour of his return.
The secretary submitted that she used the term "mad f***er" to "lighten" her letter, meaning that the complainant was "driven and ambitious, possibly to his own detriment", and that it was not intended to be discriminatory.
The secretary submitted that the reference was intended to be a term of endearment and admiration for the complainant’s willingness to "go the extra mile" and that it was meant "affectionately not aggressively".
At a meeting between the board, the secretary, the complainant and the HSE in May 2022, the charity secretary was asked whether she had any basis for her claim that the complainant had a mental health condition and accepted she did not.
A HSE representative gave evidence to the WRC that at the meeting, the secretary stated that the complainant had "a mental health issue for which he needed professional help" and that he should take a step back from returning to the post until he got treatment.
The secretary said that she didn’t mean to say "mental health issues" at that meeting but actually meant to say "anger issues".
In the WRC's decision, adjudicating officer Emile Daly wrote that it was "difficult to understand" how such a letter could have been written by a person who had such "long experience for many years in the field of mental health".
"The test of imputed disability is determined not by what was subjectively intended by the conveyer of the words but whether the words spoken (or written) were discriminatory on the prohibited ground of disability or imputed disability," wrote Ms Daly.
Ms Daly said the fact that the letter was only a draft was "not relevant".
"The extent of exposure may increase the impact on the victim but it does not mean that the discriminatory conduct did not occur," said Ms Daly.
Ms Daly found what was then said at the May 2022 meeting "went even further". While the secretary disputed in the meeting that she used the words "the complainant needed professional help", she accepted saying at the meeting that she would not support the charity entering into a contract with the complainant unless the complainant committed to "getting support for his mental health issues".
Ms Daly said no evidence had been submitted to the WRC of any mental health disability.
"I am satisfied that he was denied access to employment on grounds of an imputed mental health disability. I find it extraordinary that it was said," said Ms Daly, who awarded the complainant €13,000.
