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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— village November - December 2009
Equality Authority
far involves Niall Crowley, former
well-respected CEO of the Equality Authority –
and now occasional Village contributor – and
a number of others resigning their positions
after the authority’s budget was ravaged by
cuts championed by Dermot Ahern, Minister for
Justice. Angela Kerins, the unassailable head of
REPAK who serves as the Authority’s chairper-
son seemed largely unfazed by this, and implied
a change of tone and a move away from politi-
cally-sensitive elements of the equality agenda.
Crowley was replaced by the low-profi le Renee
Dempsey. John Waters – who has a reactionary
view of the authority’s equality traditional agenda
- was a prominent invitee to the fi rst important
public outing of the post-Crowley authority.
The Kerins’ Equality Authority has at every
opportunity stated that it is business as usual for
the organisation. At the launch of a new strate-
gic plan ( to ) for the organisation in
March , Angela Kerins, noted, “we have
had a signifi cant cutback in our budget. This
may limit what we can spend but not what we
can achieve” and “we are confi dent that through
eff ective use of resources and a can-do attitude,
we can fully deliver on the ambitions set out in
this plan”. At the launch of the Annual Report
, in September , Angela Kerins said,
“This Annual Report highlights the preparatory
work undertaken by the Authority in planning
for the continued eff ective delivery of the remit
of the Authority into and beyond”. Is this
just a smokescreen for loss of eff ectiveness?
The Authority is required by the equality
legislation to present its Annual Report to the
Minister for Justice by the end of June each year.
It is hardly a promising signal that it missed this
legal requirement by nearly three months. The
Annual Report was only launched on
rd
September . There is some doubt about the
fi gures presented in the Annual Report .
The report sets out that the Equality Authority
dealt with , queries under the equality
legislation and under legislation for statutory-
leave entitlements. It notes that this represents
a small drop of % from the previous year. It is
of interest that the report from Niall Crowley to
the Board meeting on
th
November , on
the impact of the proposed cuts to the Equality
Authority sets out that by the
th
November ,
the Equality Authority had received , que-
ries and that this was already a decrease of %
year on year. This was largely due to problems
with the phone lines in the Roscrea premises.
If the fi gures given in the Annual Report
are correct, it would mean that the Equality
Authority dealt with queries in November
and December. This would be way above the aver-
age number of queries dealt with per month
for the preceding ten months, and also above the
average monthly number of queries in .
Is there an error of up to (% of the total
claimed) in the number of queries claimed? Was
the decrease on .% rather than %?
Is diminished effi cacy being masked?
The legal section of the Equality Authority
has lost many of its experienced staff . Most of
the civil servants with expertise in casework
have been transferred back into the Department
of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The legal
section is seriously under-staff ed. It appears that
the Equality Authority is closing a high number
of fi les each month – higher than monthly lev-
els in previous years. It is not clear why they are
being closed but it is not due to the case being
resolved. Éilis Barry, the dynamic legal advisor
to the Equality Authority and head of the legal
section, has resigned from the organisation. It
appears that the Authority is running short of
funds. This would refl ect insuffi cient control of
its budget over the fi rst half of the year as the
Equality Authority stretched to implement its
new strategic plan. The funding, it would appear,
has not been managed to refl ect the very severe
cutback received to its budget. This will have
implications for what the Equality Authority can
do in the second half of the year and into .
The Equality Authority has been virtually
absent from the media during the year. This
refl ects limitations in the work done that would
normally have been a focus for media atten-
tion. It also refl ects a reluctance to comment on
matters relevant to its brief. For instance why
did the Equality Authority have nothing to say
when the Protestant Church was claiming dis-
crimination in the manner in which cutbacks
have aff ected their schools, when the legisla-
tion covers both education and religion? Why
has it said nothing about the Civil Partnership
legislation brought forward by the Department
of Justice, when previously it had been a strong
advocate for equality and access for same sex cou-
ples to Civil Marriage? Why has it had nothing to
say on the equality impact of the current crisis
and the impact on groups covered by the nine
grounds which it is mandated to consider, of the
way the crisis is being managed? Partly due to
the machinations of the Green Party, the Equality
Authority avoided a merger with the Human
Rights Commission and some of the excesses of
decentralisation to Roscrea. Nevertheless, it is
clear that budgetary devastation and changes in
personnel may be suffi cient to dispatch it to the
political peripherality that is the nemesis of the
equality agenda. Fianna Fáil , we can take it, will
not be put out.
“Is diminished
efficacy being
masked?”
Doubts about fi gures
and effi cacy.
m i c h a e l s m i t h
Kerins: Equality Authority Crowley: Her former CEO
village_oct_09.indd 34 27/10/2009 15:38:34
