Sharon Keogan (Independent)

The witnesses are very welcome this afternoon. This is a very important piece of legislation that we as a committee here must scrutinise, and the witnesses are part of that scrutiny, unfortunately. I am going to talk about NGOs in general and the collaboration and influence they have in this particular consultation process. Seven of the organisations - the National Women's Council of Ireland, IHREC, Pavee Point and others - appear to advocate for identical reforms, including the repeal of section 19, which is the addition of the socioeconomic status ground, and the standing of NGOs to bring legal claims. Were these positions developed independently or was there a co-ordinated effort? If co-ordinated, who led that process? I see that the National Women's Council submission thanks FLAC for its support in preparing the document. Given FLAC's legal expertise and the fact that both FLAC and its sister organisation, the Public Interest Law Alliance, PILA, are generally active in writing and advising on Oireachtas submissions, could the panel clarify whether FLAC or any other organisation played a role in co-ordinating or shaping shared positions across the witnesses' organisations? When publicly funded NGOs appear to co-ordinate their submissions, share or collaborate with the same legal advisers and advocate for identical reforms, how can we be sure that we are hearing a diversity of voices and not a single co-ordinated campaign? Last week we heard from the officials from various sides. I think there were 477 submissions made in this particular legislation, and 84% of them were on gender and gender identity. The Minister completely ignored the side that he did not want to hear from and left their submissions out. Therefore, is there not a risk of groupthink or, worse, a conflict of interest here? If each of the witnesses want to take that, I mentioned three organisations there.