Interesting. Extracts:

“The “beep test”, a standard aerobic fitness test for prospective firefighters for the last 40 years, discriminates against women and advantages younger candidates, a tribunal has found, following a legal challenge by a prospective recruit.

Cork Fire Brigade has been ordered to pay €8,000 in compensation to Terézia Foott, a part-time firefighter aged in her 40s who failed to advance in a November 2023 recruitment competition for a full-time post because she did not make the cut…

Cork City’s Chief Fire Officer David Spillet said the beep test had been used in Cork since the 1980s.

“There is no separate standard for males and females; the same fitness requirements apply to all candidates to ensure they are capable, fit, and healthy for operational duties,” he told the Workplace Relations Commission…

Ms Foott was told she could retake the test on another day with another fire service, an option the complainant turned down, the tribunal heard…

Adjudication officer Úna Glazier-Farmer upheld Ms Foott’s complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998.

She ruled that the use of the timed shuttle and other standards for as a run as a “one-size-fits-all” standard without grading on a normative curve to consider age and gender was indirectly discriminatory.

“The respondent openly acknowledged in its evidence that there was no separate standard for males and females, and that the same fitness requirements applied to all candidates,” she noted.

In Ms Foott’s case, the beep test used by Cork Fire Brigade “was both directly discriminatory towards the complainant and indirectly discriminatory against women, while giving younger candidates a distinct advantage”, Ms Glazier-Farmer wrote.

She directed payment of €4,000 for gender discrimination and a further €4,000 for age discrimination.”

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