Averil Power (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 4, lines 5 to 8, to delete all words from and including “where” in line 5 down to and including “funds—” in line 8 and substitute the following: “where the institution is an educational or medical institution—”.

This amendment would mean that paragraph (b) would apply to all educational and medical institutions whether they are funded by the State or not. It would remove that somewhat superficial distinction between public and private institutions. We do not generally allow, under our equality legislation or workers' rights legislation, for employers to buy their way out of their statutory obligations. Unfortunately, that is what is being provided for here. If people are wealthy enough to set up a religious body or run a religious institution without the need for public funds, they would be subjected to a much lower tests under this legislation which is unfortunate. Our Constitution allows religious bodies to impose certain restrictions in limited contexts - for example, the employment of female priests. We might argue that the Catholic Church should revise its thinking on that issue but we are certainly not going to attempt to change it by law. The situations in which we should allow bodies to opt out of equality legislation should be very restrictive and should only be where there is a demonstrable, legitimate and genuine occupational requirement to do so and this is what this amendment seeks to do.

On a technical point, the reason we are having a somewhat unusual debate is that this Bill has progressed in an unusual way and we are now, effectively, going to have a different Bill next week on Report Stage but a significantly improved one, which is a good thing. Senator Bacik's name will still be on the Bill.