Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 22 September 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement
EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement: Discussion
Ms Geraldine McGahey:
If I may, I will just address some of those queries, starting with the last one on the census in Northern Ireland and fair employment. The census figures that were released today very much show that Northern Ireland is a place for sharing. There is no straightforward majority. It also shows, I believe, that our two-community model is no longer relevant. We have a growing ethnic minority community that needs to be accounted for in terms of data collection and monitoring for the public sector generally. If we are going to develop policy that is good for everyone in Northern Ireland and can deliver against the objectives of equality for all and good relations, we then need to change our way of looking at communities. The commission is currently looking at how we might develop some recommendations in relation to the amendment of the fair employment and treatment order. We are loath to go into it in too much detail because it is fairly important to the Good Friday Agreement, etc. We think it is now coming to the time where we should be looking at how the finer detail of that looks at the monitoring of communities. I very much agree with Dr. Farry on that and he will see something on it coming from the commission very shortly.
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