Averil Power (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support where Senator Zappone is coming from in that, ideally, I would prefer to see section 37(1) deleted rather than amended. I know the Minister of State will say that his legal advice is that this is not possible. I brought forward the first Bill on this issue in 2012 and I must be honest and say that the legal advice I received was that the best we could do was amend it and that it would not be possible to delete it. I wish we could delete it but I must be honest. I cannot say that I brought forward a Bill that seeks to amend the section and then put pressure on the Minister of State politically to delete it when I had to accept that this may not be possible constitutionally.

Our task today is to come up with the strictest possible wording. That is where I am coming from in terms of the amendments I have tabled today. The Government Report Stage amendment is a significant improvement on the previous text and does address some of the concerns I raised on Second and Committee Stages about the fact that the original text did not require any conduct on the part of the employee. It would have been possible for the employer to discriminate against someone or at least to make a case for discrimination solely on the basis of who the person was. That is my most fundamental objection to section 37(1). It is incredibly unfair treatment of people who are very good at their jobs and who just want to be judged on the same basis as everybody else, namely, their performance in the workplace, but who are subjected to unfair discrimination and the fear and threat of facing such discrimination because of who they are - because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, divorced or a single parent. That is repugnant to any sense of fairness and decency and that is the fundamental thing we must change. I accept that the Bill goes so far in respect of that.

The Government amendment now requires that there be conduct on the part of the employee. I have some concerns. We need clarity around some of the issues. It does not define conduct or say that it is restricted to the workplace. It uses the words "genuine occupational requirement" but we are not clear what they mean or even what the ethos of the institution is because there is no requirement to publish the ethos. I have tabled a number of amendments that would deal with those issues and I propose to raise them when we come to discussing amendments Nos. 1 to 11.

I completely understand where Senator Zappone is coming from. My preference would be deletion. In trying to achieve as much as I can, I will push for each of the amendments I have tabled to be accepted. I think they are all reasonable. They are based on solid legal advice from people with expertise in this area and I hope that the Minister of State will go through them one by one as we get to those issues to see whether they can be incorporated into the current wording or not. It is essential that we give people the clarity and comfort they deserve. I know the INTO LGBT group is here with us today and the ASTI has also highlighted the issue of LGBT teachers. It is so that people are free to be themselves in the workplace, get on with their jobs the same as everybody else and not have to carry the fear and misery of pretending to be somebody else, hiding from their colleagues or not being free to be open about their personal lives.

I hope we are all together on this issue. I certainly see it as one where we can achieve something on a cross-party, non-party basis. It is not a party political issue, which is why when I published my Bill in 2012, I spoke to the two Ministers concerned before it came to the House and engaged in a lot of lobbying. I have worked with Senators Bacik and Zappone on this issue since then. I hope we will take that spirit of co-operation as we go through each of the issues today and do what we can to tighten up this revision as much as possible.