Pregnancy Questions at Interview — and Withdrawn Offers

The discrimination this cluster deals with usually happens to employees — but the law’s protection starts earlier, at the door: the interview question about family plans, the offer that evaporates after disclosure, the shortlist you fell off once the pregnancy was visible. Equality law covers access to employment, applicants can bring claims without a day’s service, and this corner of the law contains one of its most elegant principles.

The Principle: No Comparator, No Defence in the Field

From the European Dekker line into Irish law: less favourable treatment on grounds of pregnancy is direct gender discrimination in itself — pregnancy being unique to women, no male comparator is needed, and an all-female shortlist is no defence: choosing another woman over the pregnant candidate because of the pregnancy is discrimination complete. The same authorities settle the disclosure question: there is no duty to volunteer a pregnancy at application, interview or acceptance, and non-disclosure cannot be held against you — notification duties arrive later, as an employee, under the Maternity Protection mechanics.

The Two Fact Patterns

The question: not a standalone offence, but evidence waiting to happen — the interviewer who probes family plans and then rejects has built the applicant’s prima facie case for her. In the room, you may decline, deflect or answer as you choose; afterwards, write down exactly what was asked, by whom, when — the contemporaneous note is the exhibit. The withdrawn offer: the cleanest timeline in the cluster — offer, disclosure, withdrawal, in sequence — inviting precisely the inference that shifts the burden onto the employer, whose reasons, if invented at withdrawal, age badly. Preserve all three moments in writing.

The Route

WRC, usual architecture: six months from the act, twelve for reasonable cause, compensation for discrimination in access to employment. Honest arithmetic: rarely the cluster’s largest awards, often its cleanest liability — and clean liability resolves. The wider machinery, protections and award ceilings live on the pregnancy discrimination hub; if what happened after hiring is the real story, start at the dismissal page instead.