Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the Members who contributed today and thank them for their support. It is great to see that everyone read the Bill. I can understand where people are coming from in regard to the arbitrary figure of 15 employees, given Canada started with 250 and the United States then went very low with 15. We followed the European Commission discussions. I want to thank those in the Office of the Parliamentary Legal Advisers for helping us to draft this Bill. We have been working on it with them since 2021 so it is just a coincidence that the EU came out with its guidelines in December. As I said at the beginning, it is a movement across North America and Europe, where we are seeing a move towards this type of legislation. Obviously, I hope the Minister will take on board many of the parts of our Bill when he is implementing the EU directive because a lot of work has gone into it and many very experienced draftspersons have helped us with this.

I want to raise one bugbear of mine, which was also raised by Senator Sherlock in regard to redress. People can go to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, but that also includes the Equality Tribunal because the Employment Appeals Tribunal and the Equality Tribunal were merged, so any equality-type complaints can be brought to the WRC. I believe the Workplace Relations Commission is wrongly named because equality disputes outside of workplaces are also brought there. I will just make that point while I have the Minister’s ear.

I thank everyone for their support and I look forward to Committee Stage.