UK holiday park has been banning customers with 40 common Irish surnames

Pontins has been banning customers with 40 common Irish surnames from making reservations at their resorts

A BRITISH holiday resort company has been preventing customers with common Irish surnames from booking vacations with them, it's been revealed.

Pontins, which has six parks in the UK, has been astonishingly using the secret blacklist in a bid to stop Traveller families from making reservations.

Families with surnames including Boyle, Muprhy, Doherty and Gallagher have been outright banned from booking holidays with the company.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) investigated the issue after being contacted by a whistleblower, and the company has now signed a legally binding agreement to stop discriminating against certain customers.

According to the investigation, which was first revealed by the i , staff at Pontins would monitor calls and refused to accept bookings made by anyone with an Irish surname, or even an Irish accent.

If any bookings fell through the cracks, they would later be cancelled.

Pontins has been banning customers with 40 common Irish surnames from making reservations at their resorts

The British government has condemned the company's discriminatory policy, branding it "completely unacceptable".

"No one in the UK should be discriminated against because of their race or ethnicity," Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman said today.

"It's right that the EHRC and Pontins investigate and address this."

The commission's executive director Alastair Pringle said: "It is hard not to draw comparisons with an 'undesirable guests' list and the signs displayed in hotel windows fifty years ago, explicitly barring Irish people and black people."

The following Irish surnames were banned by the firm: Boylan, Boyle, Carney, Carr, Cash, Connors, Corcoran, Delaney, Doherty, Dorran, Gallagher, Horan, Keefe, Kell, Leahy, Lee, Maclaughlin, McAlwick, McCully, McDonagh, McGinley, McGinn, McGuinness, McHarg, McLaughan, McMahon, Millighan, Mongans, Murphy, Nolan, O'Brien, O'Connell, O'Donnell, O'Donoghue, O'Mahoney, O'Reilly, Sheriadan (sic), Stokes, Walch and Ward.