Ms Judy Walsh:

Unfortunately, nothing is super easy in this, if we are genuinely trying to ensure that the law is actively complied with and that we are not expecting people to have to take a case with the WRC to challenge something where it has already gone wrong. To go back to what we just said about adding in new grounds, it is vital that socioeconomic status be included and that its definition be as broad as possible. This is not because we want to facilitate people to take discrimination cases, which of course we do, but because we want to embed that understanding in public sector organisations, private sector bodies and employers. In other words, it should say that we do not tolerate discrimination based on social class. If we do not include it, we are almost legitimising it and saying it is fine and that it is okay that a person was denied a job because of their accent. It has come to the point now where, thanks to the campaigns that have been mounted and the evidence we now have from the CSO surveys, we know this is a major vector of discrimination and exclusion in Ireland. Adding it in does not just mean a person will be able to take a case if they were discriminated against. That is quite complicated to do. The real value of this is that my employer, University College Dublin, for example, will have to add a socioeconomic ground to all of its equality policies. This is the real, macro effect that we want. We put it on the radar of organisations and we say that it is not longer acceptable to do this. Organisations will have to think about how they will ensure that they do not discriminate against people.

We talked a little bit about enhancing the public sector equality and human rights duty. If we are really serious about this review and about enhancing the operation of the legislation, we have to look at the other mechanisms for implementing the Equal Status Acts and the Employment Equality Acts. The public sector equality and human rights duty is at the moment where public sector bodies are meant to show that they are complying with the law and are trying to eliminate discrimination, etc. This is not working. Only 12% of organisations are fully compliant with it, according to IHREC. Having talked to various bodies about this, we find that they are very confused about what they are supposed to do. They do not understand what the human rights limb of it is about. It is not working despite having been in place for ten years. The top item for me would be to have a look at the public sector equality and human rights duty and really ramp it up, change it and streamline it, if necessary, to make it more effective and more understandable to public sector bodies.