Ms Maeve McElwee:

No, but equally there are many places without formal designations that would also be encompassed by the definition in this proposed legislation.

Another challenge is how to decide whether everyone in a particular area is disadvantaged and how to distinguish between one person with a disadvantage and another who, due to different circumstances, may have every advantage but happens to live within the same area. How would an employer ever prove this point?

Deputy Ó Laoghaire asked how a person could take an action if someone less qualified but who was the child of two highly professional parents got the role. The requirement on employers is to be able to demonstrate in any interview process what their criteria were for the role and how they scored one candidate against any other. From our experience, we get plenty of requests for feedback on how people have interviewed. An employer is obliged to have a transparent process in place.

It would be difficult for any claimant or employer to prove whether discrimination took place, given that every individual comes with a different set of skills, qualifications, fit and enthusiasm for the role, which are legitimate aims for an employer to consider in an interview context. The challenge is to be able to define how discrimination took place.

In light of the fact that our society is becoming more diverse and more people are joining it, which is great, how do we determine whether any recruiter or employer has knowledge of an individual's background? Where the case is made that discrimination has happened based on family or socioeconomic backgrounds, how would any employer ever know in the first instance? We would be under an obligation in front of third parties to prove that we did not know a piece of information as opposed to we did not actively discriminate based on that information.

I will cite an example from my experience. I grew up in Dundalk. I do not understand the school system in Dublin. People talk about this school and that school and how they went to one or the other. It does not mean anything to me. As an employer hiring someone, I would have no knowledge of one school being different from any other. I would be considering someone's background, qualifications, education and presentation. Many people will simply not have those. In an interview, I would have no indication of someone's social or family background. As more people enter our society from various EU countries and elsewhere, they will have no knowledge or understanding of what might be considered socially disadvantaged. The Deputy mentioned that some of these issues are well known out there and that people understand, but many do not understand. From Donegal to Kerry, people do not understand what may be a socially deprived area in any other county.

The width of this definition and the requirement to prove to a third party that a person did not know something and factor it in pose a significant challenge. Once the prima faciecase is made that there may be a ground for discrimination, the burden falls on the employer to demonstrate that he or she did not discriminate. How could the employer prove that?

We keep coming back to the question of what the threshold for the areas of discrimination would be. How would I know if someone was on a social welfare payment? How would I know if someone was in receipt of housing supplement or family income supplement or had been out of work for a time and was in receipt of social welfare? Even if social welfare is the marker, maternity payments count as social welfare, as do carer's leave payments. There are many social welfare payments that we would have to enumerate in terms of whether they should be included or excluded for the purposes of determining someone's income and background.

There are simpler and more pragmatic ways of addressing some of these points. Most of my younger colleagues have no memory of ever putting an address on an application form or CV because people use their email addresses now instead. No one posts them a form to fill out. Everything is done by email. Most employers will never see a person's address until after they have made a job offer, in which case that job offer has already been made. If someone has a concern about education, there is no requirement to state what school that person attended. Someone simply needs to outline his or her educational attainment and work experience on a CV. The ways to address the points that the Deputy raised are evolving.