Ms Judy Walsh:

Allowing civil society organisations, including trade unions, to take cases in the public interest or on behalf of perhaps our members is basically standard across the European Union. Ireland is one of only seven countries that does not permit any form of civil society or trade union litigation. In fact, we already have a provision in our law that enables the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission to take cases where it believes that discrimination is being generally practised against persons. We already recognise that this should be part of the toolbox and the rationale behind it whenever it is introduced is to, as I said, alleviate the burden placed on individuals who may be extremely vulnerable, for example. Therefore, if a person is living in, for example, direct provision or a care home for older people or if he or she is a young kid in school, should that person be expected to litigate? I would say there are very good reasons why particularly vulnerable people do not want to litigate, even if they are granted anonymity. How that power has been used, where it is available across the European Union and, indeed, outside the European Union, is to alleviate that burden on individuals but also to draw attention to systemic issues. It may be that individual in a care home or person with a disability experienced this, but we have evidence from our research from our membership that these practises are, in fact, occurring regularly. It did not just happen to them. It is actually baked into how-----