Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. Like others, I thank the Independent Senators for bringing this motion before the House. I would like to make a couple of comments based on my personal experience in the area of housing. First, I believe we can also have racism by omission. It is important to remember in the context of access to proper information and advocacy that a person, on the basis of his or her race, can be denied information in the right context, format and language. We need to be very aware of this.
Through my work on the Private Residential Tenancies Board, PRTB, I dealt with a number of cases of anti-social behaviour in respect of which it was very difficult not to conclude that there were racist motivations in the bringing of some of those actions. We need to be conscious when examining the law that the experiences of people in some cases which would appear to be benign can actually be disturbing. I was struck by a recent report inthe Irish Examinerin which Denise Charlton from the Immigrant Council of Ireland stated: "...worryingly, 40% of the reported incidents so far this year relate to attacks on the family home or in a person’s local community."

We must be aware that people need to feel safe in their own homes. We also need to look at all of the legislation, across the board, to proof it for racism.

I want to ask the Minister of State about the Equal Status Acts 2000 to 2012. It is my experience that racism can sometimes be very difficult to prove because we have failed to include other grounds for discrimination. For example, I was privy to some recent reports in Belgium where research was being done on racial discrimination in access to housing. Belgium has equality legislation which prohibits discrimination on economic grounds. In other words, one cannot be discriminated against on the basis of one’s source of income if, for the sake of argument, that is a social welfare payment. The research found that where people do not have that type of protection, persons are discriminated against on a racial basis using other grounds for discrimination, such as their source of income.

In Ireland - this is my current experience - it is very difficult to access housing, particularly in the private rental sector. It is my view that people are being discriminated against on a racial basis because we do not have legislation that prohibits discrimination on the basis of one’s source of income. I ask that we consider changing the Equal Status Acts to bring in that ground - in other words, to provide that one cannot discriminate on the basis of the source of a person's income. In many cases, people are being discriminated against on the grounds of race in terms of access to housing. They are being discriminated against because they wish to access housing by means of a social welfare payment. I want to take this opportunity to ask the Minister of State to consider making that particular legislative amendment. It would make an important difference in the manner in which housing can be accessed in this country.