Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I think I might be sharing time, but we will see.

I will take up where Deputy Sherlock left off. What the Minister of State said was incredible. His explanation that he was trying to put the prospective employee at ease beggars belief. Indeed, it beggars belief that a person would ask such questions of an interviewee, prefaced by "I should not be asking you this but...". He then went on to ask whether she was a married woman, whether she had children and how old they were. The idea that these questions would put an interviewee at ease is not really credible. These are precisely the types of questions that do not put someone at ease. I am not saying that the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, was going to discriminate against the woman in question, but women know that they experience discrimination on the basis of having children and domestic responsibilities. This is done by employers, who, obviously, are not open about it. At the very least, it was a poor lapse of judgment by the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan. The Dáil deserves an explanation for it.

We support the Bill. We support the adding to the grounds of discrimination a person's social and economic background and disadvantaged socioeconomic status. I agree with the previous Deputy that part of what we are talking about is class discrimination, to put an accurate term on it. This is simply a reality. Class discrimination exists all around us from an individual level to societal level. At individual level the examples are numerous and include feeling unable to put one's actual address on job applications or feeling discriminated against on the basis of a person's job, address, accent, clothing or whatever. Class discrimination happens on a daily basis for individuals from working class backgrounds in this country.

It also happens in a societal sense. We live in a society and system that is built on class discrimination. The health outcome disparity between better-off areas in Dublin and more disadvantaged areas of Dublin is striking. The gap is striking because people are three times more likely to have cancer coming from a working class community than from a relatively affluent community. This is because of a lack of a national health service that is free at the point of use. Lifestyles issues can come from the pressures of not having access to resources, unlike better-off people. This can make people far more likely to suffer from bad health.

Another recent example is the Stardust fire. Families of victims have been fighting for 36 years for justice for the 48 working class young people who were killed in the fire. Those responsible have never been held responsible for what took place. It was a by-product of the callous disregard for working class life. When we talk about wealth and inequality and the kind of things we are seeing in the Paradise Papers and so on, we can see that it is societal as well.

6 o’clock

I expected the Government would allow Second Stage to pass and have the Bill discussed in committee given the international pressure and consensus on this issue among non-governmental organisations, activists, etc. It is poor form on its part that it is opposing the Bill in such a legalistic fashion. It appears the Government will lose the vote on Second Stage on Thursday. Will it then hide behind the money message and the issue of incidental expenses to prevent discussion of the Bill on Committee Stage? If so, its position will be absolutely disgraceful and Fianna Fáil should not stand for it.

I raise a broader but related point. Class discrimination is not a series of things that happen to individuals in capitalist society but a systemic issue. It is what the system itself is built on and it is highly relevant given that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The constitution of the 1918 Russian Soviet Republic proclaims the need to abolish the exploitation of men by men and the division of the people into classes and to suppress exploiters, establish a socialist society and achieve the victory of socialism in all lands. Unfortunately, Fianna Fáil did not draw its inspiration for this Bill from that constitution, which was a by-product of a revolution of working people who overthrew the rule of exploiters and took wealth out of their hands to be productively used for the majority of people.

While we favour the Bill and the outlawing if discrimination, what is fundamentally needed is systemic change to remove the discrimination facing working class people. We should contrast the state founded in Russia 100 years ago with the State founded in Ireland a few years later following a brutal, repressive counterrevolution. In Russia, people worked an eight-hour day, there was housing and jobs for all and social gains were made, including in women's rights and LGBT rights. The Bolshevik government immediately separated church and state, whereas in this State, which was constructed by Fianna Fáil and the forerunners of Fine Gael, the combined establishment parties acted to entrench the influence of the church in society, with the result that women still do not have bodily autonomy and proper sex education remains absent.

Prior to Stalinist degeneration, elected representatives and officials in the new Soviet state lived on an average worker's wage. We should compare this with Charlie Haughey and his Charvet shirts and, to a lesser degree, Ministers and Deputies living in relative luxury while working people suffered badly in the 1980s. We hear people give out about class discrimination while wanting public representatives to live on salaries that are much greater than the average industrial wage. Instead of the rule of working people, the State created here was based initially on the rule of big farmers and, subsequently, property developers and bankers. Effectively, this State operates for the super-rich. The consequence of this has been housing provision being put out of the reach of working class people, with 500,000 young people now forced to live at home and 3,000 children who are homeless. This is acutely felt today.

Fianna Fáil, even more clearly than Fine Gael, continues to be the developers' party. It was in the Galway tent with the developers in the noughties, while young people had massive mortgages imposed on them in order that developers would profit. These developers are benefitting from the housing crisis for working class people and the discrimination they face in accessing housing.

The crisis in mental health has been caused by the capitalist crisis. Mental health problems have increased by 22% in the past five years. Incredibly, they increased by 122% among young women aged between 13 and 22 years in the same period. The most striking recent example of discrimination and inequality in society has been the publication of the Paradise Papers, which once again lift the lid on how the super-rich and big business, the parasites on society, steal, squander and hoard the wealth that working class people create. The Russian constitution of 1918 should give inspiration as to what should be done with the wealth of the 1%. It should be seized and taken into democratic public ownership so that the needs of all can be met.

We support the Bill but we have no illusion that it will fundamentally end the class discrimination on which the capitalist system is based. In the words of Jeremy Corbyn, it is a "rigged system", one which is based on making as much profit and amassing as much wealth as possible for the 1%. To do away with discrimination, we need a democratic socialist society in which everyone can develop to his or her full potential and we have real change and equality in a society built on solidarity.

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