Ms Carly Bailey:

I thank everybody for taking the time to listen to what we have to say. It is very useful, particularly at this point when legislation is being looked at from the outset, and it is absolutely crucial to be able to construct and arrive at much more improved legislation that is much more thought out. It thinks about consequences sooner. The rush may come at later points but it is really important, particularly for these types of legislation where it really does and can have a massive impact on people who are very often from underheard, underserved communities. To recap where we as an alliance and me within the National One Parent Family Alliance are coming from, it is about that exclusion of family status and the definitions that a member of a family fall under. We would also be very happy to send on some further information around that. It could be helpful for the committee. It is about that definition of member of a family and definition of care. Is family status potentially the right title or name of the category because it may include others outside of that? It is something to think about.

Deputy Boland raised that and the inconsistency in definitions in the Employment Equality and Equal Status Acts. It is just not running as it should. On the socioeconomic grounds - I think all of us have spoken to it today - I was not working with the alliance back in 2021 when it submitted a review at that point. It is there. It is something we see every single day when we are dealing with families. Poverty has a huge impact on people who are separating, even if they were doing reasonably well. It can have a massive impact, especially on lone parents. If you do not own your own home, the at risk of poverty level if you are a lone parent with children, after housing costs, is more than 50%. More than 50% of all one-parent families in that situation are at risk of poverty. It is unbearable. I cannot overstate how important it is for the socioeconomic ground to be included.

That intersectional piece is something we have only touched on a little bit but we have not gone more into the weeds with the legalese of that - whether you have legal experts in front of you - but the intersectional aspect to what is being provided for is really important. There was a merit test done and if your complaint on one of the protected grounds does not meet that merit test, your whole case is gone. Being able to make a case that is based on that aggregate weight under a number of different grounds could be transformative but it would be really important that is looked at, considered and the WRC is given really clear guidelines as to what is expected out of that so we are not leaving people behind like the previous iteration has done. That would be really important. I could keep going but I will not. I thank the committee.