A County Westmeath primary school has been ordered to pay €85,000 in discrimination compensation to a teacher following inappropriate comments made during a job interview about her maternity leave.
The Workplace Relations Commission found that St Tola’s National School discriminated against teacher Emily Williams on the grounds of family status after principal Eileen Smyth told her during a June 2024 interview: “you really should enjoy every moment at home with the baby.”
Williams, who had been working at the school since 2022, was applying for a fixed-term teaching contract when the comment was made in front of the interview panel, which included the Board of Management chairperson Fr Seamus Heaney and an independent assessor.
The teacher told the WRC hearing she was “caught completely off guard” by the principal’s remark near the end of the interview process. She felt it was unprofessional to discuss her maternity leave publicly and interpreted it as a hint that she would not receive the position.
Williams was informed the following day via email that her application had been unsuccessful. The position was awarded to a colleague who was not on maternity leave and had less experience than Williams.
WRC Adjudicator Patricia Owens ruled that the principal’s comment was “entirely inappropriate” as it was made before the competition was scored and “may have had an adverse impact on the outcome of the interview process.”
While Smyth defended her comment as an empathetic remark from “one mother to another,” Owens found that regardless of intent, addressing family status during an active interview process constituted discrimination.
The school’s Board of Management failed to provide evidence explaining how interview scores were determined or demonstrate that the comments did not adversely affect the outcome, which Owens considered “fatal to the BOM’s defence.”
Williams’ contract at the school expired in August 2024. She was represented by the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation during the proceedings.