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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
September 2016 3 5
W
hat is it about Irish legislation? We set up
this complicated institutional apparatus
to enact it. We elect all sorts to devise
and deliberate on it. Much of the time of
civil society is diverted to lobbying for it.
Legislation doesn’t come cheap or easy. However, while
we are entitled to have some minimum expectations, it
would be foolish to expect anything much.
The last session of the Dáil passed hardly any new
legislation. The scandals in Console and St John of
God’s revealed that the Department of Justice and
Equality had failed to commence large portions of the
Charities Act 2009. The Irish Human Rights and Equal-
ity Commission Act 2014 included a duty on public
bodies to have regard to the need to eliminate discrimi-
nation, promote equality and protect human rights in
carrying out their functions. Not only is this piece of the
legislation not being implemented, public bodies don’t
even seem to know it is in place.
The big test for this duty on public bodies is now. The
duty specifically requires public bodies, when they are
preparing strategic plans, to assess the equality and
human rights issues relevant to their functions and to
identify policies, plans and programmes they are
deploying or will deploy in response to these. Under the
Public Service Management Act 1997 Government
Departments are required to produce a strategy state-
ment within six months of the appointment of a new
Minister. These statements are currently being pre-
pared by all Government Departments.
The Equality and Rights Alliance has been doing
some investigating.
The strategy statement process is being led by the
Department of the Taoiseach. It has not included in its
guidance any reference to the public-sector duty being
one of the obligations each Department should be
mindful of in preparing their strategy statement. The
personnel in Government Departments responsible for
the preparation of the Departmental statement are not
aware of their obligations under the 2014 Act.
The Department of Justice and Equality, which was
responsible for the 2014 Act in the first place, has taken
no action to secure implementation of the duty. The
Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission which has
a mandate to encourage implementation of the duty
does not appear to have raised the issue anywhere, in
any way.
Civil society campaigned for the introduction of such
a duty for over two decades. The former Equality
Authority published research in 2005 that suggested
Ireland was in breach of the Belfast Agreement in
failing to introduce the duty. The Belfast Agreement
commits the Government to ensuring an equivalence of
rights with Northern Ireland. Public bodies in Northern
Ireland have been subject to a duty to have due regard
to the need to promote equality and good relations in
carrying out their functions since 1998. The difference
is that there they actually implement it. In short, its
inclusion in the 2014 Act was a huge success for a weary
campaign.
The Equality and Rights Alliance have informed all
Government Departments that they are subject to this
public sector duty. They have asked that the strategy
statement of each would be developed in compliance
with the duty. This would firstly require Government
Departments to carry out and document an assessment
of the human rights and equality issues relevant to their
functions as policy-maker, service-provider, employer
and/or procurer of goods and services. It would then
require Government Departments to identify and set
out the policies, plans and actions they already have in
place or propose to put in place to address these issues.
The strategy statement should be published in late
October. The extent to which Irish legislation dealing
with progressive and important social issues holds any
sway in Government Departments will be suggested by
whether or not these strategy statements include such
an assessment with accompanying commitments.
The Equality and Rights Alliance recommended that
Government Departments should include commitments
in their strategy statement to secure ongoing imple-
mentation of the public sector duty. This would include:
establishing a working group to drive implementation;
training staff to be able to implement the duty; devel-
oping indicators and data-gathering systems to identify
and track equality and human rights issues; and put-
ting in place an equality and human rights impact
assessment methodology that would be used for draft
legislation, policies and plans.
They can’t say they don’t know. The challenge has
been promulgated. We will know in a month where the
public sector is to stand on equality.
Public sect or
agent of equality
There's a new duty in town!
The Department
of the Taoiseach,
which is leading
the planning
process, has taken
no action to secure
implementation of
the duty
by Niall Crowley
Oh oh... he forgot the public sector duty on equality
and human rights
