Ms Rebecca Gorman:

Socioeconomic status needs to be well defined and it needs to be quite broad, given the experiences people face. On the list we have poverty, source of income, illiteracy, level of education, address; type of housing or homelessness, employment status, social or regional accent and any other similar circumstances. It provides a broad enough definition. It is the combined efforts of Private Members' Bills, previous Bills that have been put forward and international legislation that is already in place. The work lies with the courts in that equality legislation has to be broad enough so that those kinds of cases can be brought where they can have interpretation as they see and as they wish. It really should be in place to protect people who are disadvantaged. In my work in the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, INOU, I see that people in long-term unemployment face huge amounts of discrimination when they try to access employment. It seems incredibly hypocritical and ironic that it is acceptable to question a person on having gaps in their CV and that because a person may not have been in work for any number of reasons that may have been outside the person's control, they are prevented from accessing employment. There will be excellent employers, but the legislation in place must be able to get to the root of those issues where people are facing systemic discrimination. I think it should be up to the courts in terms of how they interpret it but the main aim and the thrust of the legislation should be to protect people in our society who are most disadvantaged.