Ms Orlagh O'Farrell:

Senator O'Donovan posed an excellent question. There are a number of things which some of us are conscious we can do to lift human rights and equality from a level of rhetoric and into how policies are designed. It is not a matter of legislation alone but of us seeking to promote to build this into the design stages of policy. A good opportunity will arise soon in the context of the adoption of the EU Structural Funds. A great deal of spending, in terms of education, training, employment possibilities and so on, will be governed by this funding. The way has been shown in terms of previous work on gender equality and how one builds in to monitor impacts into the systems from the start. I do not know if we will be up and running quickly enough to be able to do that. However, a good use of the two bodies would be to ensure a mechanism is developed to build monitoring for human rights, equality and social inclusions into policies from the outset. That would get us off to a good start. We are not lacking ideas. Hopefully, we will have the means of realising some of them.