Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I will follow up on what was said previously. It is following on from what I said initially. It is about ensuring we cover socioeconomic disadvantage and discrimination. I understand the arguments. They are laid out on page 38 of one of the submissions, which states the factors that should be taken into account such as accent, employment, poverty circumstances and so forth. I understand the argument that case law then kicks in and to a degree it will always be up to the courts to get into the absolute specifics. I assume the UNCRPDalso deals with that scenario.

I will get specific. When we talk about crime and drugs, we talk about the Portuguese model and the idea of facilitating people into education who have been outside it. Some of that relates to people having spent time in prison and so on. How do we factor that into this legislation?

My second question is specific to former political prisoners. It is a completely separate question, but I think FLAC has been involved with a number of cases in the past that were found in favour of former political prisoners who were released under the Good Friday Agreement. It was accepted on the basis of the right to work and the Good Friday Agreement that the case could be followed through. I think it was Michael Farrell who was involved in that case. I apologise if I am slightly wrong about it. Would this equality legislation be a means of dealing with that?

As I said, they are two very different questions.