Ms Louise Bayliss:

The equality budgeting campaign is a broad organisation made up of civil society and including groups such as the Irish Feminist Network, the National Women's Council of Ireland, trade unions SIPTU and UNITE the Union, Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, SPARK and the Union of Students of Ireland.

Equality budgeting is an approach to economic policy-making and planning that places equality at the centre of decisions concerning public expenditure and income. Through equality audits and impact assessments, equality budgeting provides information on how different sections of society are impacted by specific economic policy measures. The objective of equality budgeting lies in ensuring this information is used to reduce inequalities and to achieve the best equality outcomes for specific disadvantaged groups, but also for society at large.

Equality budgeting goes beyond traditional approaches to policy-making and planning by assessing the impact of expenditure and resources on different sections of society; by assessing who does or does not benefit; by integrating equality as a driving principle; and by increasing transparency in the budgetary process. The benefits of equality budgeting include increased levels of information, disaggregated data, impact assessment and increased levels of equality, such as knowledge of who is disproportionately impacted and evidence-based policy design. There are increased levels of transparency which will make it easier for the public to accept the budgetary process. Equality budgeting originated in the 1980s in the form of gender budgeting pioneered in Australia. Over 60 countries have implemented or have worked toward equality budgeting, including Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Tanzania and Uganda. Some work was done in Ireland within the gender mainstreaming unit of the then Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

We have chosen the Scottish model because Scotland is a similar country with similar procedures. In Scotland the equality and budget advisory group, made up of government and civil society representatives, works with the Scottish Government on devising the budget and the equality-proofing of economic policy measures. A draft budget is published in September before being finalised in January. An equality statement is published alongside the budget which highlights equality outcomes by theme, such as health and well-being, or by equality characteristics, such as gender, race or age. A full impact analysis is conducted. In-depth research on the effects of the economic crisis and the minutes of the EBAG meeting is published on the Scottish Government website.

Equality budgeting is very necessary, particularly as Ireland has a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. It is essential to make good on promises regarding economic, social and cultural rights. In January 2011, a UN expert, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona criticised Ireland for failure to respect economic, social and cultural rights during the period of the economic crisis. Our groups is lobbying for equality budgeting to be introduced by means of setting up a unit with responsibility for integrating equality horizontally across all economic policy processes and planning, with particular reference to the nine grounds of the Equal Status Acts. This unit should be given the power and resources to undertake or commission research on the impact of the economic crisis and to equality-proof existing and future economic policy measures.

We argue there is a need for equality budgeting. Budget 2012 was acknowledged to have had the most detrimental impact on lone parents. According to the analysis undertaken by the Department of Social Protection this trend continued in budget 2013. It stated that this budget had the most negative impact on working lone parents. The 2011 EU-SILC report contains the most up to date information on poverty and deprivation. It shows that 24.4% of the general population suffer two or more forms of deprivation, yet this rises to 56% in the case of lone parents and their children, 32.6% higher than the general population. The rate of consistent poverty was 6.9% for the general population but 16.4% for lone parents. I will give two examples to highlight decisions made on education and protection which would have an impact and which may not have been implemented if there had been equality budgeting analysis.

Had the type of economic analysis we are advocating been done, it is possible that neither of these issues would have arisen.

The first example relates to the impact on the educational prospects of the children of lone parents arising out of changes to the one-parent family payment. Ireland has an excellent education system. The third level sector, in particular, should be applauded for its efforts to make further education accessible to all socioeconomic groups by way of grants and through the excellent higher education access route, HEAR, scheme. A major difficulty arises, however, as a consequence of the cut in child benefit for all 18 year olds, which took no account of situations where dependants aged 18 might still be in school or where a parent is reliant on social welfare. The child dependant rate is €29.80, which is supplemented for under 18s by the €30 per week child benefit payment. That payment ceases once the child reaches 18 years of age. Although no research has been carried out on this issue, we have heard anecdotally of children being forced to leave school early - children who a year later would have access to the HEAR scheme and the grant system through Student Universal Support Ireland. That is one example of the type of inequality arising from decisions of the Government.

A related example is the prospect, in July 2015, of an estimated 63,000 lone parents losing their entitlement to the one-parent family allowance. Now is the time for these parents to avail of training and education in order to be job-ready. Under budget 2014, however, second payments to lone parents who avail of FÁS or education and training board courses were discontinued. This measure effectively bars these lone parents from taking up training and education opportunities. In both these cases, an impact assessment would have highlighted the issues arising and might have ensured these disadvantaged groups were not unfairly affected.