Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I must be honest. I had to read the Bill a number of times to try to figure out its purpose, and I am still not sure about that. I think the author of the Bill is trying first to extend the nine discrimination grounds in the Equal Status Acts to include a number of additional grounds such as the rural ground and the convicted prisoner ground and, second, to create a duty on existing public bodies to have regard to promoting equality of opportunity and developing equality impact schemes for approval by the Equality Authority and also to make sure that anything it introduces is proofed in this way. One such thing it is proposing is the annual budget.

According to its author Sinn Féin's Bill seeks to introduce mandatory equality impact assessments on public bodies, introducing measures that impact on these categories as well as the existing nine categories of gender, civil status, family status, etc. I hate to point out the obvious but the Employment Equality Act already prohibits discrimination in the employment sector and the Equal Status Acts prohibit discrimination in the provision of goods and services in each of the following nine grounds: gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race and membership of the Traveller community. There are already a range of detailed exceptions that avoid extreme or unintended consequences, for example, to protect children or the age ground that applies to the maximum age at which people can attend school, etc.

I am not clear if the omission of the Employment Equality Act was done deliberately or by way of a drafting error. There were not any notes published with the Bill, which made it more difficult for me to understand what it was about. There were no assessments of the impact the obligations in the Bill would have on any of the statutory bodies. There was no assessment of the scope of the grounds or what the impact of incorporating them would be on the State. There were no qualifications or exceptions as to the possible variations that might be present in the equality legislation, and there was no assessment as to the considerable staff resources each public body would have to provide to enact the changes. I have to ask if this is serious equality legislation or just ill-thought out.

Equality legislation has come a long way, and I regret when legislation such as this is put before the House when we can speak of the record not just of this Government but previous governments. What we are faced with currently is the challenge to turn the rhetoric of fundamental rights into the reality for people living every day under the rule of law throughout our communities.

In terms of what is happening on the ground and what our Government is doing as opposed to talking about, earlier this year the Minister for Justice and Equality, who is present, appointed the members of the new Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. The Minister said that the merger of the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Equality Authority is to promote human rights and equality issues in a more efficient, effective and coherent way, a single institution whose remit is to establish a footprint at local level. It is independent from Government and that independence is guaranteed by its statute. The status is vital to its credibility, both here in Ireland, in Europe and internationally. The body will become the front-line body for turning commitment of human rights and equality into reality at national and local level. I am in favour of practicalities and on a practical level it will promote public awareness campaigns in the print media, radio and online. It is to remind the members of the public of their rights and to reinforce awareness of the support and redress mechanisms available.

Equality is not always about treating everybody the same but it is about people treating others in such a way that the outcome for everybody is exactly the same. From the outset this Government has shown that it is about best practice in words and in deeds. That is the reason I will be opposing the Bill tonight.

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