Ms Judy Walsh:

This is the first chance we have had to have an input since the laws were introduced in the late 1990s. It is also the first chance that the public has had to make submissions in the context of the review that was announced in 2021.

Stepping back and taking a holistic view, the heads outlined in the general scheme are quite disappointing in that the much broader ambition to look at how the law was working in practice is not fully reflected in the proposals before us. In some of the discussions on the matter, various members and witnesses have continually inquired about how we make what is proposed operate in practice. What I have said is that there is far too much focus on individual enforcement. In other words, a person takes a case and lodges a complaint. The goal when it comes to anti-discrimination law should always be prevention and proactive compliance. In other words, you can improve little technical bits of the law, but, for the most part, it will not be implemented unless there is equality infrastructure in place to support that. Even in the context of things like reasonable accommodation, questions arise. Are employers and service providers aware of their obligations to make provision for reasonable accommodation? Has guidance been provided to them?

We also talked about the public sector's equality and human rights duty and the fact that the provisions in this regard are not working and ought to be radically revised. That is where we start to get into prevention and proactive compliance-type measures.

I am a lawyer, and lawyers love case law and individual enforcement. However, we should not expect people to have to resort to taking cases to the WRC. The norm should be compliance.

The Deputy will maybe be aware from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, data that most people who believe they have experienced discrimination do nothing about it whatsoever. The figure in this regard for 2024 was 73%. Just 1% of people make either a legal complaint or an official complaint. Alarm bells should be going off at this juncture as a result of the fact that we have people who believe that something really bad has happened to them and that it is a violation of the law, and yet they either do nothing or feel they can do nothing about it.