Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In the five minutes available I will do my best to address the contents of the Bill. The Bill proposes to extend the discrimination grounds in the Equal Status Acts, which deal with provision of goods and services, but not in the Employment Equality Acts, which cover employment, by adding five or six new grounds for discrimination which have been articulated by Deputy Stanley.

The existing equality legislation prohibits discrimination on nine grounds, but also contains a range of qualifications and exceptions to ensure that we avoid unintended and extreme consequences. Thus, discrimination based on age is outlawed, but we ensure that children are protected and special treatment can be provided for older people where that is appropriate. Gender may not be used to discriminate in employment, except, for example, in employment providing intimate caring services.

Many of the contributions from the Opposition benches last night covered employment issues, to which the Bill as published does not apply. We were told last night that this is a drafting error that can be easily fixed. However, it is not the type of drafting error that can easily be corrected. That is because there are no exceptions or qualifications proposed in the Bill in respect of the proposed five new grounds. That is a serious omission. As my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, said last night, equality legislation seeks to eliminate unfair or prejudicial discrimination based on a person's inherent characteristics - gender, race or age, for example - rather than affecting rational assessments of risk based on a person's previous actions. The question of wiping the record of criminal convictions, for example, requires a nuanced approach via spent convictions legislation. I acknowledge Deputy Dara Murphy's point in that regard. In certain employment areas, as well as in the provision of certain goods and services, a history of conviction for serious criminal offences, such as sexual offences, fraud or theft, can be directly relevant risk factors which should be taken into account.

The secondmajor defect is that the Bill does not understand the way in which equality legislation interacts with other legislation. Reference was made last night to taxi licences and the security industry. The Bill may be an attempt to compel the relevant authorities to grant licences in such cases, irrespective of genuine concerns about suitability, but it cannot achieve that objective. The Equal Status Acts apply to the provision of goods and services other than public services that are regulated by other legislation. The Equal Status Act 2000, in section 14, makes clear that it operates without prejudice to other statutory provisions. Essentially, the 2000 Act does not apply to an issue that is governed by separate legislation.

The overly simplistic approach is also illustrated by the inclusion of living in a rural area as a proposed ground for discrimination. Access to broadband was raised in last night's debate, as it was tonight. The Government is committed to ensuring that we have high-quality broadband services and that rural areas are served as well as urban areas. Deputy Heather Humphreys spoke on that point. Does anybody seriously think this goal can be achieved by a simple prohibition on discrimination, or that increased provision of broadband services in the market would be positively encouraged by an outbreak of litigation before the Equality Tribunal?

The thirdproblem area is the proposal to create an elaborate new proofing mechanism by which all public bodies would draft equality schemes for approval by the Equality Authority. The Government is taking a much more balanced, nuanced and proportionate approach to embedding concern for human rights and equality in the work of the public sector. In the Bill to establish the new Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, we are taking a different approach to ensuring that public bodies place equality and human rights at the heart of what they do. Instead of a formalistic box-ticking exercise, with an enormous administrative overhead, we are imposing a positive duty on public bodies to look at the human rights and equality issues they face and address those in their strategic plans and annual reports. Instead of agreeing voluminous paper schemes and deploying a small army of staff for monitoring, the role of the new IHREC will be the much more active one of providing support and facilitation. That will be a much more positive and useful approach.

The finalpoint is that budgetary decisions are for the democratically elected Government of the day and for the approval of the national Parliament and cannot be subject to approval in terms of the process or content of any State agency's board. The Government opposes the Bill.

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