Ms Geraldine McGahey:

I also thank the committee for the opportunity to brief it on the work we are doing, particularly regarding our joint oversight work on protocol Article 2. I will highlight a key piece of work the three commissions have been working on collaboratively over the past year. It relates to our work on tracking and monitoring the divergence of equality and human rights on the island of Ireland post Brexit. This is a significant issue that is not only of importance to the commissions but is of interest and relevance, I am sure, to the work of this committee.

The commissions consider that, in the long term, North-South equivalence of rights is important. Protocol Article 2 requires Northern Ireland to keep pace with any changes to the six equality directives in annex 1 of the protocol that strengthen protections. However, there is real potential for equality and human rights on the island of Ireland to diverge post Brexit. We will shortly publish this research. Emerging findings reveal areas of EU law where divergences in equality and human rights protections between Ireland and Northern Ireland are likely, including in the areas of work-life balance, age discrimination in access to goods, facilities and services, and pay transparency reporting. The report will also highlight a range of recent Court of Justice of the European Union, CJEU, decisions that continue to have implications for rights and protections under Northern Ireland equality and human rights law. Once the research is published, we will issue recommendations to address any potential divergence of rights. We will be very happy to brief the committee further on this, should it be of interest and assistance.

I will also highlight our first annual report on protocol Article 2, which we published in July 2022. There was a link to it in the documents submitted in advance and a couple of hard copies are available, if members want to have a look at it. This report, jointly produced by the ECNI and NIHRC, sets out our key policy recommendations for the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, with respect to the implementation of protocol Article 2 and issues arising as a result of Brexit more generally. It sets out our concerns across a range of areas, including Bills that were progressing through the UK Parliament, for example, the Elections Bill, which removed the voting rights of certain EU citizens in Northern Ireland and has since become law.

A number of policy recommendations in our annual report were informed by the research we completed. For example, ECNI commissioned expert research on ensuring effective legislative scrutiny for protocol Article 2. Building on that research we have made recommendations to Government on steps it can take to embed compliance with protocol Article 2 at the earliest stages of policy and legislative developments.

These include recommending that the explanatory memoranda on draft UK and NI legislative proposals set out how conformity with Article 2 of the protocol has been considered.

Further, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and our colleagues in the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission have proactively been undertaking joint work to clarify the scope of protocol Article 2. We have prepared a joint working paper which sets out what we consider to be the scope of the Article 2 commitment, while we also recognise that this will ultimately be subject to judicial determination.

We also have been mapping out EU laws and obligations that we consider fall within scope of protocol Article 2. We hope to publish this work in the autumn. We consider this work to be particularly important in the context of the planned UK review of retained EU law. Our work will help make clear the extent of EU derived rights in Northern Ireland that we consider the UK Government cannot roll back on. During the past year, both the ECNI and Ms Kilpatrick's colleagues have been tracking and monitoring draft UK and NI legislation to ensure that it is compliant with the UK Government’s commitments under Article 2. We have also been engaging proactively with relevant parliamentary committees as part of that scrutiny role. In addition to parliamentary committees, we have been jointly engaging with our equality and human rights stakeholders and commissioning research to better understand the impact of Brexit on equality groups, including minority ethnic and migrant people in NI.

One issue which is of great concern to us is the loss of EU funding. We have already published research and policy recommendations which highlighted the impact of the loss of EU funding on equality groups in Northern Ireland. Our recommendations included the designation for the purposes of section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Although this research primarily focused on the loss of European Social Fund funding, we recommended that the Northern Ireland Executive provides bridging arrangements to ensure there is no gap in funding between the end of the PEACE IV programme and the commencement of the PEACE PLUS programme.

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has also recently published research on Brexit, health and its potential impact on Article 2 of the protocol, as well as human trafficking and Article 2. One important aspect of our work is what we have done in raising awareness of Article 2, including with the public via media campaigns and through the publication of our short guide. I believe there is a hyperlink to that in the papers we have furnished to members. Of interest to the committee will be the results of a recent independent public awareness survey we conducted which showed high levels of public support in NI for the UK Government’s commitment in respect of Article 2 of the protocol, with nearly three quarters of respondents indicating that this commitment was important to them. Of interest in that is that many respondents, 42%, felt that their equality and human rights had already been reduced due to Brexit.

In conclusion, I reaffirm, as the others have said, that the three commissions have been working well together and in close partnership. We have been tasked with a challenging and critical role, particularly at this time of concern about wider risks to human rights and equality protections in Northern Ireland. Working together, we will build on the considerable achievements to date and on the work already progressed. We have a great deal more in our pipeline and on our work programmes and we look forward to keeping the committee briefed. I thank the Chairman.