Ms Judy Walsh:

There are no codes of practice whatsoever on the equal status legislation, nothing on reasonable accommodation or discrimination in schools, for example. A code of practice would be hugely useful. A lot of the powers are resource intensive. They take a lot of time, collaboration and dialogue. The equality body directives will require members, as legislators, to think about whether it has adequate powers on paper and whether it will be able to exercise those powers in practice, that is, does it have the technical, human and financial resources it will need to exercise its functions effectively. The two things are completely integrated and, ideally, should be considered together.