Ms Sin?ad Gibney:

I thank the Acting Chair, Deputy Buckley, for his comments. I will always answer the question as to whether we need more power. We are well-founded in our legislation as a national human rights institution and the national equality body for Ireland with adequate resources and independence to carry out our function to monitor the policy, practice and laws governing human rights and equality in this country. There are elements of our founding legislation that ultimately need to be tweaked and certainly strengthened but I believe we are still at a point of testing those boundaries. We are at an interesting point in the growth of our organisation where we are taking on multiple mandates. The independent monitoring mechanism for CRPD is one of them. We are also the designate co-ordinator for the national preventative mechanism under the UN convention against torture and we have other mandates in relation to gender pay gap reporting, to do with Brexit within the Article 2 working group. What that means for us is that we are growing well as an organisation but we will need increased funding over the coming years. I am happy to put that on the record and we will continue to push for that. I will just say that we are accountable to the committee members as Oireachtas Members. We do not have the same constitution, if you like, as some other State agencies which have a parent department. We have a Vote account and an Accounting Officer as the head of staff within our organisation, so we do enjoy that independence. I really only speak for my organisation in answering the Deputy's question but the key for us in being more effective is data. I say that once again. The reason data are such an important drum for us to beat is that what cannot measure we cannot change. For us, in monitoring the experience of different groups in Irish society while accessing services and realising their rights, and in their experience of discrimination, we need to understand and have the data behind it. Addressing this as a State is the biggest piece that needs to be advanced for us to be more effective as an organisation.

I said I would only speak for our organisation but I will say one other thing that should be examined is perhaps the independence of other bodies. For example, I mentioned that the IHREC is the incoming co-ordinator of the national preventative mechanism of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. At the moment, the mooted inspection of places of detention Bill involves reviewing the make-up of the Inspector of Prisons but what we are not seeing is the built-in transparency and independence that should be in there. That office is not independent in the way it should be to effectively do its job, and there is no transparency in the reporting of that organisation. We will obviously be trying to address that as the co-ordinator but unless that legislation is created in a way that allows for that independence, that body will always be hamstrung. It is an important question to ask. Of State agencies, we probably have one of the strongest independent make-ups because we are governed by the UN Paris principles and Dr. McDonagh referenced our A status earlier. This status is a measurement against the Paris principles that says that an organisation is independent and well-resourced enough to actually monitor the State on its human rights and equality obligations. That same independence and those same questions should be asked of our other State agencies within the State infrastructure.