Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Maciej  Szczupaczynski

Monika Borowy And Piotr Borowy

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 21 Equal Status Act, 2000

CA-00071076-001

25/04/2025

The complainant gave evidence on affirmation.

In respect of the core element of the complaint he submitted that the respondent would not sign the application form for Rent Supplement in or around May 2024.

He referred to a number of application forms. The first of these did not feature in the evidence.

The second, however is the key document and was central to the complaint as this is the one it is alleged that the respondent would not sign.

There was a third application form also, but it was not clear whether this was ever shown to the respondent or submitted to the Department of Social Protection.

In response to a specific question arising from the respondent’s evidence below he confirmed that he made a false statement on the application form in relation to the expected receipt of a redundancy payment.

The respondent, Monika Borowy gave evidence on affirmation .

In her submission she says that the  complainants' claim of discrimination under the Equal Status Acts is without merit and represents a severe abuse of the Workplace Relations Commission's processes. The respondent's refusal to sign the new Rent Supplement application 2 (Form SWA 3) in May 2024 was not based on any discriminatory grounds.

It was strictly necessitated by the obligation not to verify an official application form containing known, fraudulent misrepresentations. Under Irish law, signing the form would have involved the respondent in certifying  a known untruth and make her party to a social welfare fraud.

Furthermore, the complainants had been on the Rent Supplement scheme from the very first day of their tenancy, and the respondent never had any issue with this. No references or documentation were ever demanded from them; the respondent acted purely in good faith and trust.

In May 2023, the respondent formally issued a Notice of Termination to recover her property in Balbriggan and prepare it for sale or personal re-occupation. Out of goodwill, and due to market conditions, the respondent granted the complainants an extended period until September 2023 to locate new accommodation.

In June/July 2023, a professional estate agent conducted an interim inspection. Due to the complainants' having school-aged children, the respondent extended their stay further, permitting them to remain until the end of the school year in summer 2024.

By May 2024, having already secured a buyer for the property, the respondent discovered that the complainants had made no genuine effort to find alternative accommodation.

Instead, they demanded that the respondent sign a new Rent Supplement application form. They pressurised the respondent, stating that if she refused to sign, they would withhold her personal mail and illegally deny access to the property for any mandatory inspections. They also said that they would cease all rent payments immediately, and in due course they did so.

Between May 2024 and  April 2026 there was a total rent default.  The complainants completely withheld rent. No rent was paid to the respondent for a continuous period of 24 months (from May 2024 onwards), resulting in serious financial loss.

In August 2024, an estate agent attempted to assist the complainants in finding a private rental. The agent formally concluded that they were unplaceable because they had deliberately defaulted on rent for months and completely lacked valid, current employment references.

Following these failed placement attempts and realizing the respondent would not yield to blackmail, in late 2024 the complainants initiated legal proceedings in both the RTB and the WRC. Throughout this  entire period, the complainants completely ignored all requests from both the respondent and the estate agent to gain entry for lawful property inspections or maintenance.

In August 2025, the dispute escalated to an RTB Mediation. During this session, the complainants explicitly stated to the RTB Mediator that they had absolutely no intention of paying any rent, nor did they have any intention of vacating the property.

Based on this, the RTB Mediator immediately halted the mediation and referred the case directly to formal Adjudication.

In giving her evidence, the witness exhibited the application form date May 14th, 2025. The form contains a question as to whether the applicant (or any relative etc) ether has received or expects to receive a redundancy payment.

It shows that the complainant ticked the box indicating a response in the negative.

In fact, Mr. Szczupaczynski received a substantial financial redundancy package, which he intentionally omitted from the form to fraudulently circumvent the statutory means test administered by the Department of Social Protection.

This is a direct violation of Section 248(1)(a) and Section 248(2) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, which criminalizes the withholding of information to obtain public funds.

He also demanded the respondent's signature in May 2024, despite his full-time employment contract continuing until July 2024. Full-time employment automatically disqualifies an applicant from receiving Rent Supplement under Department criteria. Forcing the respondent to sign a pre-dated or false timeline violates Section 251(1) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 (Aiding and Abetting Welfare Fraud).

On the HAP application form, the complainant  claimed the reason for leaving his full-time position at Tesco was "they didn't like me there". This was a deliberate attempt to conceal his true employment status and artificially bypass the mandatory 9-week disqualification period imposed under social welfare rules for voluntary cessation or misconduct.

Providing this false reason violates Section 248(1) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005.

The form required the landlord to certify a long-term intention to continue renting the property. The respondent could not truthfully certify this, as the tenancy had legally terminated, a buyer was secured, and the property was being prepared for vacant possession. Certifying a false tenancy constitutes an offense under Section 6 and Section 9 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001.

The respondent relies on the following statutory provisions to demonstrate that her actions were governed by a strict legal duty, which completely supersedes any claim of discrimination:

Equal Status Act 2000 (Section 14 - Statutory Exceptions): Section 14 explicitly dictates that nothing in the Equal Status Act can construe an action as discrimination if that action was required or necessitated by obligations imposed by any other Irish statute or law. The respondent's refusal to sign was legally mandated by her obligations to prevent fraud under the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 and the Criminal Justice Act 2001.

The Principles of Rent Supplement Qualification: Under the Department of Social Protection statutory rules, an applicant is strictly disqualified from Rent Supplement if they work full-time (over 30 hours/week), have undisclosed capital (redundancy), or if the tenancy is no longer viable or has been legally terminated. The Respondent could not bypass statutory criteria to validate an invalid claim.

Official Notifications to Authorities: Formal fraud reports filed with The Respondent is the heavily injured party in this matter, having suffered a total loss of rent for two years, severe property damage, and ongoing stress from criminal mail theft.

In light of the extensive documentary evidence of bad faith, criminal conduct, and blatant attempts to utilize the state mechanism to commit fraud, the Respondent respectfully requests that the Workplace Relations Commission dismiss the Complainants' claim in its entirety as vexatious, frivolous, and wholly unfounded under Section 14 of the Equal Status Act 2000 and recognise the statutory defence of the Respondent, whose refusal to sign was an act of compliance with Irish criminal and social welfare laws.

The central issue is clear from the submissions of the parties. It will also be clear that there is a wider, more acrimonious dispute between the parties over the complainant’s continued occupation of the property (up to April 2026) without having paid any rent for a two-year period.

But the Decision in relation to the complaint is whether the respondent discriminated against the complainant on the Housing Assistance ground. In summary the sequence of events was as follows.

In March 2023, the respondent sought the return of the property for its own use and served a notice to vacate on the complainant. The complainant contested the validity of the notice, but it was subsequently adjudicated by the RTB Adjudication Tribunal to have been a valid notice to quit.

September that year was set as the date for the complainant to move.

However, for a variety of reasons to do with the personal and family circumstances of the complainant and his family, to her credit this was not pressed by the respondent and September came and went without any change.

By agreement between the parties, the complainant was supposed to be looking for alternative accommodation but according to the respondent’s inquiries they did not do so. In any event they did not find any.

We move to May 2024 and the complainant’s approach to have the application form for Rent Supplement completed by the respondent.

Her evidence to the hearing was that she was very surprised about this given the notice to quit which had been due to expire the previous September and the expected termination of the rental agreement in March 2024. One of the questions on the form is whether the property is available for rent and the respondent’s position at that time was that it was not as she stated in her evidence above. I accept that this was genuine.

However, her reason for not filling out the form given in her sworn evidence was that it contained a number of false statements which she was not willing to certify for the reasons she set out above in her oral evidence.

In particular, as noted above the form contains a question as to whether the applicant (or any relative) either has received or expects to receive a redundancy payment. It shows that the complainant ticked the box indicating a response in the negative, i.e. that he was not in line for a redundancy payment. The respondent apparently was aware at the time that this was not true.

In response to a question from the Adjudicator at the hearing the complainant (eventually) confirmed that this statement was false. I am satisfied that this was not the only misleading information on the form.

There was reference to a subsequent form. However the complainant could provide no evidence of any such second application having been made.

The respondent stated in her evidence that she took advice from the Department of Social Protection (DoSP) which said that  she should submit the part of the form required by the landlord.

She did so but the complainant was told that that was inadequate. The respondent said that the allegedly missing information was already with the Department from the previous application. Between them the parties failed to resolve this issue.

However, the  respondent had complied with her obligations (as advised by the DoSP) and there is no evidence here of any refusal to cooperate with the application simply on the Housing Assistance ground.

She questioned the complainant at the hearing as to whether he had actually made a third application (in late 2024) and he did not give a convincing answer that he had. In any event her uncontested evidence was that she never saw another form. It appears that he declined to pursue the matter further.

I conclude with relative ease that the respondent’s reasons for her actions were unrelated to any discriminatory consideration and were based at the time on valid concerns about not participating in a fraudulent application. These were vindicated at the hearing by the complainant’s confirmation that he had knowingly put wrong information on the form. The respondent was well within her rights to decline to sign it.

It is beside the point of the specific complaint, except to the extent that it is an indication of the respondent’s good faith, but she demonstrated extraordinary sympathy to the complainant in the course of this saga. She delayed the termination date of the notice to quit, assisted the complainants in the search for new accommodation and endured a period of two years during which they were not paid any rent at all. 

Despite that the respondent told the hearing that the property had been left in very bad condition, and she was left with substantial bills unpaid by the complainant. Matters have now taken a different turn, and evidence was given of a Garda investigation into issues between the parties.

Complaint CA-00071076-is not upheld

For the reasons set out above Complaint CA-00071076-is not upheld

Equal Status/HAP