IRISH rebel songs and taunts about England's 2006 soccer World Cup flop are racist when deliberately voiced in the presence of an English person, the government-established Equality Tribunal has ruled.The "offense" by Irish employees on a Dublin construction site was ruled by the tribunal to be worth $29,800 in compensation to an English pipe-fitter who worked alongside them for only two months.The tribunal said in a report this week that the unnamed man, who worked for an engineering company on the site, claimed colleagues called him names and frequently ganged up on him to sing Irish rebel songs.Some workers never spoke to him, and whenever staff had to enter tanks or dangerous spaces they would say "send the Brit in" to make the way safe.Negative reports about England in newspapers, including references to the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria across the Irish Sea, and the performance of the country's football team in the 2006 World Cup were also read out aloud in his presence.The man told the tribunal that shortly after joining the firm in April 2006 the abuse was so bad he began eating lunch in his car instead of the canteen.Two months after starting work he was made redundant despite having been given an indication that the job could last for at least 12 months. He claimed he was sacked instead of a less experienced Irish worker because he was British. He said that when the issue of redundancy arose, one of the other workers stated aloud "the Brit should be sacked and an Irish man should not be let go."Another said to the supervisor, "No Irish man is going out of the gate while we employ a Brit."The Briton described his supervisor as intimidating and claimed he joined in with the abuse, even sniggering and laughing.The company, also unnamed in the report, rejected the harassment allegations and claimed the man never complained to his site manager about the abuse.It also said he was laid-off because he had less service than other workers on the site and he was let go under a last-in first-out policy. The company also said it never guaranteed the man a year's work.The tribunal found that the man was racially harassed and that some of the acts were of a blatant and intimidatory nature. It ordered the company to pay him $29,800 in compensation.But the tribunal ruled that the man was not chosen for redundancy because of his nationality.