Dr. Kara McGann:

In terms of the work that IBEC would do with its members across the area of equality, diversity and inclusion, I am 13 years with IBEC and, if you take equality as a base and everything else building from that, we have seen a huge increase in the number of employers starting to engage on this topic, some of whom were well established and more of whom are looking at the diversity of their workforce. That is just the structure. The important work is on the inclusive and belonging piece, and on ensuring we stamp out things like racism and discrimination.

As I said in my opening remarks, trust is a huge issue where, as has been mentioned, people have gone looking for jobs and the humiliation they have experienced. That cannot be allowed to continue in 2021. It was never acceptable and it absolutely is not acceptable with all that we know. We need to tackle that head on and overcome the systemic social prejudice and exclusion of generations of the Traveller community. Employers have put in place awareness-raising and training programmes on diversity and inclusion. The Donegal Traveller group has a diverse aware programme that I know a number of our employers have gone through. We need to see greater uptake of that and that is something we are strongly encouraging and seeing good uptake on.

We had one of the Traveller advocacy groups in to talk to IBEC's diversity forum, which would have 200-plus medium and large public and private sector employers. The group is about networking, sharing best practice and talking about initiatives.

This was in January of last year. We found that there was major interest in understanding what were the challenges facing the Traveller community, how those challenges impact members of the community when they look for employment, or, indeed, those already in employment, and what, therefore, we needed to do. The ladies who came to speak to us were phenomenal. They were really engaging and we had very positive feedback from the employers we represent. Then Covid-19 hit. I feel we would have gained some momentum and seen some initiatives come to pass if the timing had been different. We are hoping we will see that situation revisited now. That is where we are with that aspect.

Turning to the integrated workplace strand, this undertaking was made up of a range of different initiatives concerning the area of cultural integration, and unions and employers engaged with the endeavour. Mr. Joyce and I worked together on several different elements of it. To give one example of the projects we worked on, we rolled out an initiative on cultural integration in the workplace. That involved addressing what the latter looked like, talking about language and banter and all these things that are often excused as just being a joke or the way we do things around here. However, in reality, that involved examining those elements of behaviour under an equality, diversity and inclusion lens and then considering how we could do things differently.

That was at a time when we had moved from being a homogeneous society - organisations are very much a microcosm of society - towards looking at how we were integrating the range of cultural diversity which existed. The project did not focus solely on the Traveller community, and that is something we could build on now. However, it was very successful in raising awareness and educating people about the importance of integration, as well its value. It also raised awareness among employers regarding how this type of undertaking benefits not only them but the individual and society as well. In that sense, it is a no-brainer. Mr. Joyce may have more examples of the other initiatives that were a part of that integration project.