Originally set up in the 1970s as an informal 'people's court' to address workers' claims that they were unfairly sacked, the new report indicates that the EAT has strayed far from its original purpose.

"It is clearly unfair to the claimants [workers] to purport to be an informal setting when in fact the respondent [employer] organisation arrives with a full legal team in tow led by senior counsel, " say the study's authors, Dr Colette Darcy of NUI Galway and Dr Tom Garavan of the University of Limerick.

While the tribunal has already been scrutinised by the Department of Enterprise, which failed to recommend any changes, Darcy and Garavan have now called for a fresh review into the "flawed" tribunal and particularly the role of the legal profession in its deliberations.

The study surveyed the experiences of over 500 workers who took claims to the EAT in 2002 and 2003, and included in-depth interviews with several of them. Most said they were taken aback by the legalistic nature of the hearing.

"One claimant said he is extremely bitter about the fact that the chairman of the tribunal was on first-name terms with the respondent's legal counsel and stated that they had lunch together during a recess, " said the study.

Another claimant said that, even though he won his case and was awarded compensation, he was left with just 1,000 after paying his legal expenses.

The chairman of a tribunal is almost always a barrister who is flanked by a trade-union member and an employer member.

The study also found that a "creeping legalism" has resulted in the tribunal's decisions favouring higher-educated, professional and higher-paid workers who could afford their own legal representation. Manual workers, on the other hand, tended not to employ counsel and this put them at a disadvantage irrespective of the merits of their case, said the study.

It found that 60% of those workers who had legal representation won their cases, compared to 40% who had no representation. Workers with representation also received higher compensation, getting 5,000 to 10,000, while those pleading their own case to the tribunal received 1,000 to 5,000.

The average compensation figure awarded by the tribunal to successful claimants in 2005 was just over 9,000, though it can award up to two years' pay.

Of those who won their cases, over half were awarded compensation of between 1,000 to 10,000.

"This is a far cry from the large awards often quoted in the newspapers which have been blamed for the increased levels of claiming among employees, " said the study. "The reality is that while compensation may be the preferred remedy of the tribunal, it very often is not sufficient to cover legal costs which most claimants who engage them accrue."

In what it describes as a "shocking finding", the study found that, three to four years after being sacked, 23% of the workers had not found another job. This soared to 57% when it came to workers over 55 years of age.

One typical worker, who was 48 at the time of his dismissal and won his case, said that given his lack of formal qualifications and the absence of a good reference, it was very unlikely he would ever work in the printing industry again.

The authors highlighted the "emotional stress and strain" all workers spoke about after losing their jobs and how the legal approach of the tribunal ignores this. One worker spoke at length about the impact on not just him but on his wife and family.

"He stated that he felt depressed and dejected following his tribunal determination and was still struggling to understand how he was not given an opportunity to tell his story, " said the study.

Once the tribunal finds in favour of the worker, it can award compensation or, as was the preferred option when it was established, order that the worker be reinstated. But the tribunal now rarely, if ever, orders re-employment. Yet over one-third of the workers surveyed who won their case and received compensation said they would have preferred their old job back.

The study again accuses the tribunal of siding with the employer who always let it be known that, irrespective of the outcome of the case, it would prefer not to have to take the worker back.

In another "disturbing finding", the study revealed that over half of all the workers surveyed said it took over a year to get their case to the tribunal and that this made re-employment impractical.

The increasingly legalistic environment at the tribunal "raises fundamental questions about the very nature of the tribunal and its continued insistence that it is an informal forum", the study concludes.