Katherine Zappone (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. It is great to have him here to take this Bill. I understand this is his first time to take Committee Stage of the legislation, this being our third session on this Stage of the Bill.

We are all aware that the Government will bring forward its own amendments on Report Stage. These amendments were prepared almost two years ago and I offer the rationale that I constructed then and I very much look forward to hearing the Minister of State's response because it would help me to understand where he is going with this on Report Stage and also whether to resubmit some of the amendments. It is great also to know that the Minister of State had a background in the origins of this Bill before us with the leadership of Senator Bacik.

Amendment No. 4 proposes "In page 4, to delete lines 1 to 4" and substitute what is set out in the text. I tabled the amendment with the following legal logic in mind. The way I viewed section 2(1)(b) was that it was an attempt to bring some of the provisions and wording of article 4(2) of the EU framework directive into Irish law. That is a sound approach. What we have is a section that attempts to offer additional protections to employees so that discriminatory treatment can only be taken with regard to an employee where there is a genuine occupational requirement to do so. As the Bill stands, it appears that it is intended to mean that an employee is still protected with regard to his or her private life, that is, anything that happens outside the context of employment. That is some of my thinking in trying to understand this section of the Bill and the thinking behind this amendment.

As the Bill stands, it is very cumbersome in its efforts to bring the EU framework to bear on our domestic law. It conflates or fuses genuine occupational requirements and broader religious ethos type exceptions. These should be separated out once for and for all in order that with legislative changes we can ensure for employees, or perspective employees, that the balancing of religious ethos concerns can only be done with regard to the characteristic of religion or belief or the characteristic of the equality ground. Balancing religious ethos concerns can only be done with regard to that one ground and this balancing must have regard only to a genuine occupational requirement. I propose that the best way to do this is to bring the protections of a genuine occupational requirement, to which the framework directive refers, into the subsection where it states "takes action which is reasonably necessary to prevent an employee... from undermining the religious ethos of the institution". In other words, I am trying to bring up and integrate the language used in section (1)(b)(ii) into section 1(a)(ii) because the drafters separated that out. I wonder why they did that. Was it to enable them to put in additional protections only for employees who work for institutions that receive public moneys? What about employees who work for private institutions or private individuals who do not receive public moneys such as churches, synagogues or the housekeeper of a presbytery? Why should they not be protected with the notion that they can only be treated unfavourably with regard to religion or belief if this is a genuine occupational requirement of the job? If section 1(a)(ii) is retained without the change I propose, then those employees who work for a religious institution who do not receive public moneys could still be discriminated against by virtue of their sexual identity, disability, age or race, by virtue of who they are, because their private lives are not off-limits for the institution when it reflects on what does or does not undermine its religious ethos. That was my thinking at the time.