Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I believe am sharing time with Deputy Coppinger.

I was nearly going to punish the Minister of State by starting where I started last night. I will let him off and will not go back to where we ended up last night. It is obviously difficult to pick up a slot midway through having made half the points last night and having to conclude them this afternoon. The point I was making when we adjourned last night was that to allow dances is appropriate, but that exemption should only be dealt with in a spirit of accommodating religious liberty.

The problem we have with this issue is as a direct consequence of the undue influence of the Catholic Church in the provision of essential State services and a legacy issue with that in terms of hospital care, education and so on. Everybody needs access to schools and hospitals. The religious ethos of an organised religion or its believers should never be allowed to interfere with a citizen's right to health or education. That is the starting point of this.

For example, Savita Halappanavar's husband, Praveen, should never have been told in a Galway hospital that this was a Catholic country and that his wife was not entitled to a termination of pregnancy. It should have had nothing to do with the provision of services in a State-funded hospital.

Section 37 exemptions have been given, which have allowed the Catholic Church to discriminate in cases where it believed an employee was not upholding the ethos of the school or hospital. In certain instances, that is appropriate. If it was an entirely Catholic-funded institution and the job was, for example, to teach the Catholic religion, there would have a basis for discrimination but in any other situation, it would not.

While I welcome the Bill and the fact we are beginning to discuss discrimination, it does not go far enough. What we should be saying is that educational and medical institutions, which are funded by the State, should be taken out of the remit of section 37 altogether. Those institutions have a wider role in society. They are funded by the taxpayer and equal access should exist regardless of religious beliefs. In a hospital, there is no occupational reason only a person of faith could do a medical or administrative job. Similarly, there is no occupational reason in State schools. It is linked to the provision of chaplains or spiritual advisers in those institutions, which should be a matter for the religions and not be funded by the State. The Minister of State, Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, is aware of work done by Atheist Ireland in this regard. It has highlighted the case of institutes of technology, which were established on an entirely secular model and have no religious functions, and yet we know hundreds of thousands of euro in taxpayers' money is being used to fund Catholic chaplains in a number of the institutions. That is simply not good enough.

The provision in the Bill about the prohibition on discrimination by landlords against rent supplement recipients is welcome but while it will stop landlords putting up a notice to the effect that no rent supplement applicant need apply, it does very little else in terms of preventing discrimination against those in receipt of rent supplement. The ability of landlords to discriminate against them on an ongoing basis could continue but more "discreetly", for the want of a better word. The situation of tenants has been made incredibly more vulnerable by the Government’s fudging and mishandling of the rent situation of late, which is most worrying. The Government could be doing a lot more in that regard.

The final issue I wish to address is the question of why the Bill is not more comprehensive than it is. It is a confusing, miscellaneous piece of legislation. When we talk about equality provisions, that is a recognition that equality really means treating different people differently. That is being equal. I do not understand why we have not been all-encompassing in the Bill’s provisions. I note that the Bill makes a slight reference to retirement age, making the point that it is not discriminatory to have different ages for different fixed-term contracts but it does not deal with the issue before the House currently, namely, the abolition of compulsory or mandatory retirement, which is a far bigger issue for older citizens. It is a bit mad that a committee of the Houses conducted hearings yesterday with Age Action Ireland and other bodies to try to address this very important issue while we have legislation before us dealing with equality that touches on the retirement age but does not address it. That is bad planning on the part of the House. What is being sought in Deputy Ferris’s Bill, which is a matter on which many older citizens feel strongly, is the elimination of the maximum age in employment contracts. If there is a need to have a maximum age in a particular occupation, then that could be legally justified. In the normal course of events, for example, if it required a super level of physical fitness, that would be allowed. However, to have a contract with a compulsory retirement age is a measure people have long sought to review. That is not in any way pandering to this unfortunate trend in society where people have to work longer in order to secure a decent standard of living but that is a slightly separate argument. I would like the Minister of State to address why the abolition of the compulsory or mandatory retirement age is not included in the Bill and whether he would be open to including it because it would be a far more preferable way forward.

I echo some of the points made by Deputy Mac Lochlainn last night in terms of the absence of rights and equality for disabled citizens. It is regrettable and I would like to see more progress in that regard. I am pleased the Bill has been brought before the House but we are only on Second Stage and we could make it considerably better. We could make it better for lesbian, gay and atheist teachers by removing educational and medical institutions altogether from the remit of section 37 but we could also make the situation better for older citizens, disabled citizens and others who have an equal right to demand equality, as we are not giving them as much attention as we should.

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