Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

These are technical amendments which need to be made in two places, namely, section 10 and the Long Title to the Bill. They transpose into Irish law the EU directive referred to. The directive was one of a package of competitiveness measures published by the Commission at the time of our Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Essentially, the idea is to ensure that we remove any barriers to free movement of workers within the EU by putting in place positive measures to ensure that relevant information is available to them in languages other than the language of the receiving State and that they have access to redress mechanisms on the same basis as nationals of the receiving member state.
The substantive EU directive that eliminates discrimination against migrant EU workers is contained in an earlier EU regulation 492/2011, which we have already fully transposed into our employment equality legislation. The directive to which I am now referring now is 2014/54/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014, on measures facilitating the exercise of rights conferred on workers in the context of freedom of movement for workers, which was published in the Official Journalin April 2014 and comes into operation by virtue of Article 10 on the 20th day following its publication. We have until 21 May 2016 to transpose this directive, but as there is nothing new in the directive in so far as it compares with our existing equality legislation, I am taking the opportunity today of including it in this legislation. The sole exception is contained in Article 4.2B, which creates the new role for our designated national body of "acting as a contact point vis-à-visequivalent contact points in other Member States in order to cooperate and share relevant information." Through this amendment, we are providing in our legislation that our new body will be the contact point. The Equality Authority is the designated body for the purpose of other EU equality-related directives and is already part of the European network of equality bodies. As such, this is not a new role in practice.
During my time as a member of the board of then Employment Equality Authority, an important part of its work was defending employment rights. It is interesting to note that this has not been referred to in legislation previously. Article 8 of the directive requires that the directive be referenced in national transposing legislation. All the other provisions of the directive have equivalents in our equality legislation. As this directive provides for no new rights, the opportunity is being taken today to make this amendment to the Bill, which is all we need to do by way of legislation for transposition to be complete. If we do this today, the transposition of the directive will have been completed ahead of time. To some degree, it is a technical amendment. However, it is important in that it means that the new body is the contact point for equality measures.