INSTITUTE of Directors chair Barbara Judge has been suspended following allegations of bullying and racism.

Ms Judge was told of the decision “pending further investigation” yesterday evening after the institute’s council met to discuss a report from law firm Hill Dickinson which said that she had reduced her assistant to tears and suggested that black people “can get aggressive.”

The day before, she said that she had “voluntarily decided to step aside temporarily from my role as chair and contest these allegations and the flawed process conducted so far.”

Director-general Stephen Martin had secretly recorded a conversation with Ms Judge which now forms part of the investigation, according to the Financial Times.

She is alleged to have said: “The problem is that we have one black and we have one pregnant woman [on the institute’s secretariat] and that is the worst combination we could possibly have.”

In a statement, the institute said: “The council took the decision, having received the Hill Dickinson executive summary, to suspend the [institute’s] chair pending further investigation into the matters raised and the process.”

Ms Judge said it was “incredibly disappointing that a draft confidential legal report has been leaked before a decision has even been made to proceed.”

She complained that she had not yet “been given an opportunity to respond to its findings, thereby denying me any right to a fair hearing.”

Ms Judge courted controversy in 2016 by claiming that long maternity breaks were bad for women, saying: “My mother used to say: ‘When a baby is born, it needs to be fed, bathed and diapered.’

“An 18-year-old girl can do that. Your job is to get the money to pay the 18-year-old girl.”