Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 379: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the basis for his comments in March 2005 that discrimination against Northern Nationalists had disappeared; the evidentiary basis for his comments; the person or persons from whom he took advice which led him to express this view; if his attention has been drawn to the British labour force survey statistics for 2003-04 which indicate that the opposite is true, that there has been no significant improvement in the unemployment differential in 30 years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19017/05]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The protection of human rights and the promotion of equality is at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement. This was collectively affirmed by the parties in the commitment within the Agreement to "the mutual respect, the civil rights and the religious liberties of everyone in the community". This included, in particular "the right to equal opportunity in all social and economic activity, regardless of class, creed, disability, gender or ethnicity."

In the media interview to which the Deputy refers, the exact comment that I made was:

matters have changed dramatically in the North in such a way, the difficulties in certain areas of the North are more to do with the socio-economic difficulties, the type of discrimination that took place in previous decades, all of that has disappeared.

This comment accurately reflects the fact that discrimination on the basis of religion, political belief, and a number of other key grounds, is now comprehensively outlawed in much legislation in effect in Northern Ireland. This includes the Fair Employment and Treatment Order 1998; the Race Relations Order 1997 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. European directives, legislation and other international obligations also offer protection against discrimination.

Moreover, Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 places a duty on public authorities to have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity, including "between persons of different religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation", in carrying out their functions. Those who experience illegal discrimination now have a range of avenues open to them in order to seek redress. The Government keeps such cases under review and raises them and other equality issues, as appropriate, through the framework of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.

The Good Friday Agreement contained a clear commitment to a range of measures aimed at combating unemployment and progressively eliminating the differential in unemployment rates between the two communities by targeting objective need. Encouraging progress was made by the devolved administration to eliminate this differential, including through the task force on employability and long-term unemployment and the procurement review. The commitment to the progressive elimination of the differential was reaffirmed in the joint declaration, published by the Irish and British Governments in May 2003. Recent meetings of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference have reviewed progress on the implementation of this commitment, and the issue will again be discussed at the next meeting of the conference which is due to take place towards the end of this month.