Mr. Colm O'Gorman:

I will answer some of the general questions and then Ms McGowan, who works at our European institutions office and who is based in Brussels full-time, will follow up on the others.

On the question of our work within member states, we are very active at national level in many of those states. As a global organisation, we also work on them - both globally and regionally - through our European institutions office. A priority for us in recent years has been discrimination in the EU context, with a focus on that which relates to Roma people, LGBTI individuals, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. That has been a strong focus for us in the past number of years and it will continue to be so in the future. At national level within member states, the organisation works on those issues where they are particularly relevant. As part of a European and global organisation, we also feed in to the work that is happening in other countries.

Senator Leyden raised the issue of Roma rights. He referred to the response the committee received when it adopted an important item of work a number of years ago in respect of which Deputy Durkan took the lead. That response speaks to the level of prejudice that exists within Irish society towards Roma people and towards members of the Traveller community in general. When we talk about a group of people in terms of that fact that its members do not help themselves or when we make an entire group responsible for the conduct of members of a particular community, that is discriminatory. We do not assess Irish people within our society, for obvious reasons, and neither do we assess the position in terms of how certain members of society might operate.