A property management company has been ordered to pay €14,750 to a female tenant who sought refuge in a women’s shelter after it was found to have discriminated against her.The woman, Sanaa Qaddi, spent a number of weeks in a women’s refuge and returned home to find her Housing Assistance Payment (Hap) had been cancelled by the local authority.Reapplying for the support, the company managing her tenancy, Kierans Property Consultants, refused to sign the form despite “repeated” requests. The company instead said it would “put in a complaint” to the council about non-payment of rent and her “threatening emails”.The incident put Qaddi and her children under “enormous financial and emotional pressure at a time when we were already at our most vulnerable”, she said.The case was adjudicated upon by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) which, while best-known for handling workplace disputes, is also responsible for handling equal status and equality issues.The WRC found the refusal to complete the Hap application was a “clear breach” of housing assistance grounds under the Equal Status Acts.Noting the breach was at the “extreme of the spectrum of gravity”, the WRC awarded Qaddi €14,750 and directed the company to immediately sign her Hap application.The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) welcomed the decision, having represented the woman in the case.“The WRC’s finding sends an important message that people in receipt of Hap are protected from discrimination and that those providing accommodation must respect those rights,” the commission’s head of legal Michael O’Neill said.The IHREC said, in a statement, that the loss of Hap put the woman under “severe financial and personal strain”, added to the rent arrears and forced her to take sick leave from work.Qaddi had told the management company she was in a “refuge for domestic issues temporarily” and reapplied for Hap upon her return in April 2025 to the property in Drogheda, Co Louth, after 25 days, the WRC heard.However, the management company “explicitly refused” to sign the Hap form, WRC adjudicator Pat Brady said.In an email, the company said while it had “sympathy” for Qaddi’s “personal situation”, “we are not completing any more forms for Hap as we have already done so”.They said the property the tenant lived in was causing the “most amount of problems” across the “large” portfolio of homes they manage.As a “direct consequence of the respondent‘s failure to sign the application form”, overdue rent began to accumulate, as the woman lost out on Hap, Brady said.The company, the WRC found, continued to refuse to fill out the form for the woman.Brady said the situation bore all the signs of the company “‘having had enough’ of the complainant and simply deciding that it would not assist with her application”.He said it had “particularly petty” reasons for refusing to co-operate with the application, “and there is a suggestion of retribution for previous difficulties” with the woman.The company, however, maintained that Qaddi had breached the tenancy contract by stopping paying rent without a valid notice, that she has cancelled Hap and had “abandoned the property/implied surrender”, among other complaints.The company said it would not complete the Hap forms “on the basis that the applicant moved back in without permission and the landlord informed us of their intentions to sell”.Brady found in his decision that there was “absolutely no basis for the respondent’s assertion that the tenancy had ended and the complainant moving in again after her return from the refuge was a new tenancy”.Brady said the local authority terminating the Hap was “extremely worrying”.“While it may have been acting in compliance with some strict interpretation of the regulations which were not opened to the hearing, its actions had disproportionately and reasonably foreseeable adverse consequences for the complainant.”He suggested Hap regulations should contain an allowance for such situations, noting the termination of the payment could have “catastrophic consequences” for already distressed families.