Charity used fake wedding ring in photoshoot because of public’s view of single parents, tribunal told

Aoife Cooney, a single mother of two, quit as the organisation’s digital media and marketing manager in 2022 and took an unsuccessful bullying case against the charity’s chief executive and its director of advocacy

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Focus Ireland used a prop wedding ring for publicity photos shot in 2019 after being presented with ad agency research showing donors were “less likely to support single parents” who had fallen into homelessness, a tribunal has been told.

The details were disclosed to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) at a hearing into an unsuccessful complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998 against the charity by a former employee.