Maria McCormack (Sinn Fein)

I rise with pride to speak in support of the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025, introduced by my colleague Chris Andrews. This is important legislation, simple in its construction, yet powerful in its intention. It seeks to do one vital thing, namely, to finally recognise socioeconomic disadvantage as a ground upon which discrimination can occur and outlaw it under equality law. Right now, it is not illegal to discriminate against someone because he or she is poor, because of his or her address, because he or she is on social welfare or because he or she has a regional accent. We have laws that protect people on the basis of gender, race, religion and disability but not poverty. This is a glaring omission, and it is one that the Bill seeks to right.

Let us be clear about what socioeconomic discrimination looks like. It encompasses a child from a disadvantaged community being told he or she is not the right fit for a school; a woman from a Traveller or working class background being denied a job because of where she lives; a man in a homeless shelter being laughed at for using a prepaid card or being charged extra because he has no bank account; and families being told to wait at the back of the housing queue, not because they do not qualify, but because of a stigma that follows from generation to generation. This is not theoretical. This is real and it is happening every day.

The Bill does several important things. It amends the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the Equal Status Act 2000 to include socioeconomic disadvantage as a protected ground. It provides a clear legal definition covering things like poverty, source of income, homelessness, education level, employment status and even regional accents. It acknowledges that discrimination does not happen in a vacuum, it intersects, and the most vulnerable people often carry multiple disadvantages, compounded and reinforced by systemic neglect. This kind of discrimination is often invisible. It slips through the cracks because it does not fit neatly into the existing nine grounds of our equality legislation. However, if you grow up poor in Ireland, it can feel like the system is designed to keep you down. We see this in Laois and all over the country. I have met young people who are leaving school early, not because they do not have the ability, but because the supports are not there. This is particularly relevant to a Laois Traveller group that I met recently. I am thinking of particular youths in that group who were keen to go to further education and to progress in school, but because they were from the Traveller community, they felt discriminated against. I have stood with people who survived addiction and were trying to rebuild their lives but faced discrimination every single time they walked into a job interview or applied for a rental.

This Bill does not fix all of that, but it sends a powerful message that their experience is real and the State will no longer stand by and turn a blind eye. Some might say this is too complex, that poverty is too hard to define or that it is not the job of equality law to address social class issues, but we say this: if we are serious about equality, we must be serious about economic justice. France, Belgium and other European countries already include socioeconomic status in their equality legislation, so why not Ireland? We have the data and the stories. We now need the will. I commend Senator Chris Andrews on his leadership on this issue and all the organisations involved, especially those here with us today, the legal experts and the communities who have campaigned for this for years. Organisations like the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission have long called for this reform, as have legal academics, anti-poverty groups and community development networks. This is not a radical proposal but one that is long overdue. Let us be brave enough to challenge discrimination where it lives, in systems, in attitudes and, yes, in our laws. Let us stand with the young man from the council estate, the woman in emergency accommodation and the families struggling, not because of lack of effort but because the odds were stacked against them from the start. Let us call this what it is - discrimination - and let us pass this Bill to end it.