Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the Bill before the House, which aims to put equality budgeting on a statutory footing and is a welcome proposal. This means that in preparing Bills relevant to the budget and other operations of public sector bodies, the authority can give advice to those public sector bodies on how they should approach and ensure equality in their operations and planning. It ensures the public bodies will have a strategy to foster equality in their operations and in wider society as a result of what they do. Moreover, it will monitor the outputs to ensure these things actually are happening and that the organisations in question will have, through further training, the capacity to do this. Equality budgeting is a sensible path for Ireland to follow and I suggest this is an opportunity to improve Ireland's planning and implementation capacity in order that particular groups and marginalised groups in particular are not inadvertently discriminated against in highly important legislation, such as the annual budget process.

The Cabinet handbook states that regulatory impact assessments should be conducted for all significant legislation. As every Member of this House is aware, this does not happen. However, it must happen if Members as legislators are to improve their effectiveness over the coming years, and the inclusion of equality budgeting in that process would be a useful addition. There is no downside to introducing equality budgeting in Ireland and putting it on a statutory footing. It improves transparency and provides useful checks on how public assets are deployed to make sure one group is not inadvertently discriminated against or gaining over another group. It also improves strategic thinking and analysis at a national level, at the official level here in Parliament and at a local level within individual public sector bodies. In short, equality budgeting is a more enlightened and smarter way for officials, politicians and civil society to work.

I encountered equality analysis in the form of gender-proofing in the course of policy work I was undertaking in the United Kingdom. It was the first time I had seen it and it was highly effective, because what we were proposing was put through a gender-proofing process and that forces the mind to start thinking in different ways. When thinking about policies or seeking to deploy public assets, it forces the mind to ensure the inclusion of various groups, be they based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, income level or whatever. I commend the Bill the House.

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