Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Briefly, I support this Bill. It is absolutely right to add these other categories for inclusion in the equality legislation to ensure that equality extends to all sectors that need it and that potentially suffer discrimination when it comes to dealing with State agencies or in respect of how public assets are deployed. Consequently, this Bill is welcome.

I wish to give two instances of what matters can lead to when equality is not taken seriously. The first is the case of the aforementioned Tony Rochford, who is outside Leinster House. I had never met the man before but he was a self-employed tiler who, like many self-employed people in the construction sector, has been devastated by the economic crisis. He is trying desperately to pay his mortgage, only to then have the property tax loaded upon him. However, because of the particularly draconian manner in which non-payment is dealt with in the case of the self-employed, as opposed to the PAYE sector, he now cannot work because he has not been given a tax clearance certificate. This is really desperate; he is faced with a choice of either paying his mortgage or paying the property tax and has taken what is an extreme form of action. I do not suggest it is the right form of action but it is an action he has decided to take, namely, to go on hunger strike. He has been on hunger strike for 17 days and he appears to be expressing determination to go all the way. I ask the Government to consider the self-employed in this regard because in all sorts of ways they are hit disproportionately by the impact of the crisis, the property tax and so on. I believe that Tony Rochford's case underlines the need to do something urgently about this.

How much longer do I have?

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