Applicants must be genuine to claim discrimination, rules court

Hmmm. Newly qualified can theoretically mean any age, however, until the introduction of the Age Regs, Universities or other training and education providers (gatekeepers to the professions) were able to discriminate in relation to age for various high demand courses such as accountancy Medicine, Law etc. If a complainant was sufficiently aware and able to access sources of data, the age profile of a profession could be generated and indirect discrimination established. It would be a nightmare of a job to do, but it has been done before in relation to gender and requirements for 10 years experience at Board level. Women were statistically less likely to have this level of experience, the time at this level was not an essential component of the job being advertised- QED _ indirect discrimination on gender grounds. Its funny (and potentially expensive) what you find when you play with numbers.

Quite agree Nigel, newly qualified can mean any age. What about someone who has re-skilled in another area? After 25 years in quality control then production management, I moved in to HR, and as such could have been newly qualified at turned 40.

So, "newly qualified" cannot apply to a 50 year old ? Clearly in this case Ms keane had found an alternative self-employment but what about those who would have persued the offer of a post to employment ?

Perhaps serial complainants are vexatious nevertheless, they do seam to highlight lapses in pro-social and/or less than equitable employment advertising policies and just maybe employers do need to be a bit more thoughtful, attentive and pro-active when writting advertising copy.