Mr. Liam Herrick:

Perhaps I will begin and then I will hand over to my colleague. In the letter we submitted to the committee that enclosed our submission on the general scheme of the Bill, we identified a number of significant matters that have been omitted from the current Bill, including provisions on indirect discrimination; the inclusion of public functions in the definition of "services" under the Equal Status Act; the repeal of the blanket exemption that prevents challenges to discrimination laws; the amendment of the gender ground, which other colleagues also flagged already; and the question of socioeconomic status, which the Deputy raised. We also made recommendations previously on strengthening the public sector duty on equality and human rights, which is included in our founding statute, and the crucial question of the collection and publication of equality data, which is a long-standing omission in this area.

The final point I will draw attention to and which I mentioned briefly in our submission is the legal obligation on Ireland to transpose the standards for equality bodies directives. The Government has not made clear whether it intends to do that through this Bill, through another Bill or through another method. It is essential this be clarified now. Our view is that the obligations under those directives are so significant that they should be dealt with by separate primary legislation. It will be difficult for this committee to advance its consideration of the Bill unless that point is clarified by the Government.