Ireland's largest property website, daft.ie , has been ordered to block any discriminatory advertising from appearing on its website.
The Workplace Relations Commission made the ruling after finding that rental adverts on daft.ie breached the Equal Status Act on the grounds of family status, age and on the rent allowance ground.
These adverts included terms directed towards prospective tenants, which read “rent allowance not accepted”; “suit family or professionals only”; “would suit young professionals” and “references required”.
The case was brought to the WRC by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.
The WRC ordered that Daft Media Ltd “refrain from publishing, displaying or permitting to be published or displayed on its website” discriminatory adverts.
It has also directed daft.ie to “develop a methodology to identify, monitor and block discriminatory advertising on its website” based on a list of terms of trigger words and phrases provided previously to them by the IHREC and to be kept updated.
In making its ruling, the WRC rejected daft.ie ’s contention that it was a ‘mere conduit’ for online content under EU e-commerce law and also rejected the claim that such EU law provisions rendered Daft Media Ltd immune from the complaint by the commission.
In a submission to the WRC, Daft Media Ltd asserted that it is not an advertiser or a publisher, but that it is an Information Society Service Provider as defined in the EU e-Commerce directive and that it is not responsible for the content of the material that appears on its website.
