Dr. Iris Elliott:

I wish to flag the cross-cutting issue of access to justice. This is that different groups and individuals have information about their rights, that they are aware of them and have addressed well-established barriers to them accessing their rights, as well as and the cost of engaging in discrimination cases. I am conscious we are still waiting for the publication and recommendations for action of the independent review group on the civil legal aid. It is the whole area of access to justice. We have produced reports on access to justice for Travellers and for disabled people. There is a great of deal of evidence. That is more generally an important area. It is an area where we feel there is a lot of backsliding around. We specifically referenced the rule of law because we are concerned about the backsliding around this area across Europe. Third, there is backsliding around civil society space and the support for civil society's engagement in the democratic process and protection for those concerned to raise difficult issues, to be heard in a democratic space and to have their views reflected in the legislation, policies, etc.

While I appreciate that we are focusing on equality legislation, we have deep concerns about the whole policy tier in Ireland. We have just been in a UN review on the rights of women and girls. We still do not have a national strategy for women and girls. We are still waiting for the national strategy on disability. It is an interesting one that the indication is that it will be a human rights strategy and not an equality strategy. That is a conversation we need to have. The migrant integration strategy is late. We have only just got the national Traveller and Roma inclusion strategy and the LGBTIQ strategy. This was a missed deadline around the tenth anniversary of marriage equality. While we are thinking about the legislative tier, we are also raising significant concerns about the policy tier as well. IHREC is about to bring out a publication that is about the core components of national equality strategies to address what we will be seeing as a need to monitor that policy tier.