€22K FOR MAN FORCED TO RETIRE BY CHARITY

A HOMELESS charity has been ordered to pay a former employee €22,000 for unlawfully “retiring” him at the age of 66.

Joseph Mcgrath, now 68, worked as a family mediator with Focus Ireland since 2016.

The Workplace Relations Commission yesterday found it discriminated against him because of his age in not allowing him to continue after he turned 66 two years ago.

Focus Ireland stated that Mr Mcgrath’s employment ended at the end of the fixed term and not because of his age.

But adjudication officer Kevin Baneham found Mr

Mcgrath’s role “was ended through unlawful and less favourable treatment because of his age”.

The complainant stated he had been recruited by Focus Ireland in 2016 to work on a new project involving family mediation to prevent young people entering homelessness.

He told the WRC that age should have been a positive and not a negative.

He felt “humiliated and hurt” as this was a dreamed about.

Mr Mcgrath said he had always wanted to work with young people who were on the margins of society and signed a two-year fixed term

role

he had contract. Prior to his Focus Ireland role, Mr Mcgrath had worked for a Government Department.

He was previously in the Defence Forces and is in receipt of a pension earned by his service with the military. Focus Ireland submitted that Mr Mcgrath was engaged on a two-year contract and could have no expectation of working beyond this.