Ms Yvonne Woods:

I will respond to the first part of Deputy Fleming's questions. I thank him for raising this issue. There is huge expertise in the human rights bodies. It would be of huge benefit to Government to make full use of that expertise, particularly when held by a State body. This is working in Scotland, in the sense that the equality and budget advisory group there equality-proofs its budgets. The Equality and Human Rights Commission forms part of that group and flags issues that arise in any proposals. We would fully support that. On the new body to be established, we have some concerns about it and believe it should be independent and fully resourced in order that it can carry out its work. In essence, it should be able to identify whether a group is being disproportionately affected by any measure, which in our view can only be useful.