Invasion of Privacy by < Guesthouse owners>

Guys,

I was mortified this morning by the intrusion of our room by a member of the staff at <name of guesthouse>, Dublin 9. Myself and my partner stayed at this guesthouse overnight. We inadvertently lost the track of time this morning, which we were almost an hour past the check out. We thought it was 12 but it was in fact 11. Never mind but the point is that does a staff member have a right to open the door and tell us that we need to check out while we were still in bed?

I was mortified because I felt that the staff member could have the courtesy and respect by placing a note telling us that and late check out would apply. We would have no problem in paying for this. I confronted this staff member about this at the reception a few minutes later. She said that she was ordered by her boss. Her boss who is the proprietor was very rude and said that her staff telephoned and we never replied. Why? We are deaf and could not hear the phone. The staff knew we were deaf since we checked in and requested them to place a note under the door in case of emergency since we cannot use the telephone. (really special equipment for deaf should be provided as in case in some places).

The proprietor shrugged our protest and that we cannot hear the phone, etc. We complained about the intrusion of privacy and that she was being unethical. She even mocked our deafness and laughed by saying that we have to pay. She was so unapologetic. While we were annoyed by her discriminatory attitude, we remained calm and requested her to apologise. She refused by calling us a bluff that she would call in gardai. I said to her go ahead and we would discuss with gardai about the problem. It would be more of a civil matter than the criminal matter since we never refused to pay anyway.

My car was parked outside and the proprietor blocked my car by placing her car on front of mine. I think it was illegal to do so. I took the photo of this as an evidence. I managed to free my car from the blockage and got out. My partner and I requested the proprietor to apologise but she refused and continued to abuse and ridiculed our deafness. She kept smirking at us all the time. She in fact has not called gardai and gave us one more chance to settle up but we were not in position to do so with such kind of treatment. I wrote a note to her that she can go ahead and call the garda and that we were leaving, leaving her my number for gardai to contact me.

I will be calling in gardai to report but I am not sure what gardai can do. Still I will ask. I will also ask about the blockage of my car. I will be going down a number of avenues that might be available for us to raise our grievance as follows:

1. Intrusion of our privacy;
2. Discrimination on our deafness;
3. Attitude of the proprietor;
4. Blocking our car.

Which agency should we complain about the attitude and behaviour of the hotel, B + B and Guesthouse by the proprietor/manager/staff.

Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.