Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)

I commend my colleague, Senator Chris Andrews, on introducing the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025.. This Bill proposes to add a tenth ground of discrimination to the nine grounds that already exist. It is to prohibit discrimination on the basis of your address or your accent - your socioeconomic background. Every city or large town has areas that are associated with poverty and discrimination. There is often intergenerational poverty so it is very difficult for people to actually get out of that poverty. They need support. We know it is used against people living in particular areas within a town or a city, especially.

I was speaking recently to a teacher and he told me that when he started out seeking jobs and applying for positions in different schools, he was staying temporarily with his sister in an area of Dublin and was using her address. He was not getting called for interviews, so he asked himself what was going on. He changed the address he was using and the next thing he was called for interviews. I am not going to say where it was but his sister's address was in an area of Dublin that had received a lot of bad press relating to poverty and deprivation. It was obvious that it was the address that was going against him being called for interviews. Things like this really do happen. If we go back to when sectarianism was rife in the North, people's addresses were used to ensure people from a certain background were given the jobs in an area. If somebody came from an area that was perceived to be a Catholic area and was therefore supposed to be nationalist or republican, every effort was made to ensure they did not get that job. It even came down to a name and the spelling of the name. We often thought about how Martin McGuinness spelled his name differently from Ken Maginnis and they were from very different backgrounds. Something like that was used. It happens all the time. We need legislation to ensure it does not continue to happen. It is disappointing that the Government has sought to delay this Bill for 12 months. I ask, as my colleagues have, that it is reconsidered.