Human rights commission and media company reach agreement over property adverts

Human rights commission and media company reach agreement over property adverts

Sinéad Gibney

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Daft Media Limited have reached an agreement concerning property advertisements that are potentially in breach of equality legislation.

This follows from a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) decision, dated 6 August 2019, which ruled in favour of the Commission, and subsequent engagement between the Commission and Daft Media.

Daft Media has now agreed to withdraw its appeal against the WRC decision.

The media company has agreed to expand and develop practical methods to identify, investigate, review and remove discriminatory advertising on the its website, and has also committed to reviewing and, where necessary, improving the system continuously.

The Commission welcomed the development. 

Sinéad Gibney, chief commissioner, said: “The Commission welcomes Daft’s engagement in this matter and the resolution of this long-standing litigation. We took the initial proceedings in 2016 as the Commission had identified a number of adverts that discriminated on the housing (‘HAP’), age and family status grounds of the Equal Status Acts.

“The procedures that Daft will operate must help to ensure that discriminatory advertising does not appear on the website of one of Ireland’s leading property advertisers.”

Share icon
Share this article: