Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, to the House and this legislation. The Government announced in September 2011 that it was going to merge the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Equality Authority. That made eminent sense and honoured the commitment made in the programme for Government to be smarter, to reduce the number of agencies and to ensure that there was no doubling-up, with those agencies which had done similar work being brought together.
The Irish Human Rights Commission was and is a very good body. Maurice Manning was its president and was a former Member of this House. As Senator O' Donovan has quite rightly pointed out, it has an A rating when benchmarked against the Paris Principles, which is no mean achievement. Sometimes we forget what we have achieved in this country in terms of human rights compared to other countries. Certainly, we have a long way to go, but we have come a long way as well. It is interesting to note that 32 states in the United States still allow the death penalty. We heard recently about an appalling case where that went horribly wrong. At least we do not have that in this country. It is important every now and then that we should see the glass as being half full. I think that most citizens in this country espouse equality and want to see fair opportunity for everybody.
On the Equality Authority, I would not necessarily agree with the assessment that it has always been up to the mark that we would expect. I think of the case of the Equality Authority v. Portmarnock Golf Club, where the Equality Authority lost. It spent millions of euro of taxpayers' money fighting a case against a golf club. I would consider golf clubs by their very essence to be elitist places. I read an application form for one golf club recently which wanted to know what the applicant's parents did for a living, what the applicant did for a living and what school they went to, along with other similar elitist questions designed to help the club decide whether they were going to be accepted as a member.
Thankfully, the state of the economy in recent years has dictated whether such clubs take members, but the Equality Authority was not honouring its mandate in taking that case, which it lost. A former Minister had asked the Equality Authority to produce a code of conduct on equality for golf clubs - the Minister has referred to such codes as being an integral part of the upcoming legislation - but it did not do it. It was more interested in the headlines that it was going to get by beating Portmarnock Golf Club on the issue of female membership. I did not agree with the judgment of the Supreme Court, but it is the highest court in the land. The main point was the waste of resources in picking that type of battle when one looks at the many other equality issues which affect ordinary people.
Bringing these organisations together will future-proof this type of thing from happening again. The legislation, which I have gone through in detail, outlines many checks and balances. If we were able to achieve all that the legislation facilitates, we would be the best country in the world for human rights and equalities. It is a smart move to bring the two agencies together. I said to the former Minister, Deputy Shatter, that I would have liked the legislation to be enacted a lot sooner, but I know that the current Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, is committed to having it over the line before term ends, so we have about four weeks in which to do that. It is utterly achievable with co-operation from all sides of the House.
I am disappointed that Fianna Fáil is opposing Second Stage, because I do not believe it is against the principle of what we are trying to achieve. I believe that many people will realise that two agencies doing similar work is not a smart use of resources. There is a better way of doing business. Human rights and equality are intrinsically linked. They are not different or separate; they are one of the same kind. As such, it makes absolute sense that the Government should have a single national agency promoting the principles of human rights and equality. As I said, they are two sides of one coin. It makes absolute sense to channel our resources as effectively as possible. On a conservative estimate, this measure will save the taxpayer €500,000 per year. I note the Government's commitment to make available that €500,000 to ensure that the agenda of equality is driven and that certain actions can be taken.
For the various sectors where there may be issues to do with equality, writing national standards and expecting people and organisations to cohere with them is the right thing to do. The code of conduct to which the Minister referred is a key aspect of that. More than the Portmarnock Golf Club, if there are elements of an industry or a sector which do not espouse the high levels of equality that we would expect, a code of conduct for that sector or area of society is the right way to go. If the code of conduct is not being adhered to, there is always the option of going down the judicial route, but that should be the last step rather than the first, because every agency has a responsibility to respect the public purse. That clearly did not happen in the Portmarnock Golf Club case.
The Equality Tribunal is not affected by the legislation, but we need to look at that as well. I have attended some cases and I know that it does fantastic work, but there are areas where the legislation is being abused. I know of one example where a local authority had thousands of complaints. Each one of those complaints had to be investigated by the Equality Tribunal, but not one has stood up. All have been dismissed. I tabled an Adjournment motion on this matter a year ago. I do not know whether a case has been upheld in the past 12 months, but that was a flagrant abuse of the Equality Tribunal system by an individual making a complaint against a local authority. The upshot of it was that the local authority spent hundreds of thousands of euros preparing defences against those bogus complaints. That is a classic example of a waste of resources. In response to my Adjournment motion, the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, said that she was not inclined to examine whether situations where one had hundreds or thousands of complaints could be stopped, but it is worth looking at in the future.
However, it is important at this point that we get this legislation over the line, so that the Human Rights and Equality Commission can start doing its work, start putting its five-year plan in place and start to identify the areas within our society where inequalities need addressing.

We have a very good international reputation and there is much more we need to do. By the end of its term, this Government will have significantly advanced human rights and equality in this country compared to when it took office in 2011. Across the political divide there is political support for this because we recognise our international responsibilities and recognise the difference between right and wrong. We are, hopefully, moving towards the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which will be another significant step forwards in the battle for equality of opportunity for all sectors.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, of which I am a member, has had lengthy debates on this legislation which have fed into this comprehensive Bill. The principle of the Minister referring legislation to his or her line committee for examination of the heads of the Bill works very well, and this is a classic example. While it might be slow building blocks, we are getting there and this agency will be a crucial step in the right direction for human rights and equality in this country.