A State employment watchdog has upheld an appeal by Teagasc against a ruling that it pay €40,000 in a discrimination payout to a long-serving female statistician.

In the ruling, deputy chair of the Labour Court Katie Connolly has found that the State agricultural advisory and research body did not discriminate against Paula Reid on the grounds of gender by failing to provide her with equal pay in respect of a male comparator under the Employment Equality Act.

Along with setting aside the €40,000 compensation payout in the March 2022 Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) ruling, the Labour Court has also set aside the WRC order as part of the ruling that Teagasc pay Ms Reid arrears since 2017 - and this could have totalled almost €140,000 based on figures provided by Ms Reid.

Ms Reid has 45 years’ experience with An Teagasc and is the only woman to have worked as a statistician at the agency.

Comparator

In her claim, Ms Reid stated that she earned approximately €20,000 per annum less than her male comparator, statistician Jim Grant - retired since 2020.

Teagasc stated that Ms Reid is a technician statistician on an experimental officer grade salary and is on a salary of €72,570, which exceeds the maximum of the correct comparator research officer’s pay scale.

In the court’s findings, Ms Connolly found that the work undertaken by Mr Grant in terms of participation in external national committees exceeded that of Ms Reid and therefore is of greater value.

Ms Connolly stated that, as a result, the court finds that they were not engaged in the same or similar work in that respect.

Ms Connolly stated that taking all the factors into account, the court is satisfied that Ms Reid has not established that she engaged in the same or similar work at the level of a senior research officer with her named comparator.

Ms Connolly stated that while there was a commonality in the type and nature of statistical work undertaken and while Mr Grant was focused on building further skills to enable career progression, the court found that, overall, he was engaged in more strategic and innovative work at a senior level than Ms Reid, that was attested by his research, publications and participation as a member of large-scale research projects.

Ms Connolly stated that it was not demonstrated in her evidence that Ms Reid carried out work aligned to the senior research officer grade.

Ms Connolly stated that the court was satisfied that Teagasc was entitled to pay a different rate of pay to Ms Reid compared with her comparator, as they were not engaged in “like work” and the reasons for doing so were outside of the discriminatory grounds set out in the acts.