Report under section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014
Section 42(1) of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Act 2014 provides that:
A public body shall, in the performance of its functions have regard to the need to:
- eliminate discrimination;
- promote equality of opportunity and treatment of its staff and the persons to whom it provides services; and
- protect, promote and fulfil the human rights of its members, staff and the persons to whom it provides services.
For us, the protection and promotion of human rights and equality, and the elimination of discrimination, are core to our functions and purpose.
Under this statutory Public Sector Equality and Human Rights Duty every public body is required to Assess, Address and Report on how they incorporate equality and human rights into their work.
In our Strategy Statement 2022-2024, we set out an assessment of the human rights and equality issues we believed to be relevant to our functions and purpose.
The following are the developments and achievements in regard to the policies, plans and actions which have been put in place during 2023 to address the human rights and equality issues which we have assessed to be relevant to our functions and purpose.
Further actions will be developed to progress these objectives over the course of this strategic cycle, and will be reported on in due course.
Accessibility
Progressively increasing the accessibility of our services is a central objective for us over the strategic cycle. In December, we appointed accessibility officers under the areas of Access to the Physcial Building, Access to our Website and Access to our Services, in addition to two Disability Liason Officers to assist staff with resonable accommodations.
As well as hosting a fully accessible events space, during the year, we upgraded our ICT equipment to facilitate hybrid events, broadening our ability to allow people who may not be able to travel to attend our events.
Broadening our communication of information on rights through Irish Sign Language
All videos that we produce have both captions and ISL as standard practice, and we have developed guidelines for use of ISL at events. A number of staff have undertaken QQI level 3 beginner classes in ISL and several are undertaking intermediate classes.
Getting information on rights to groups at particular risk
Throughout the year, we facilitated programme of outreach with civil society organisations representing rights holders across the equality grounds.
These included:
- an information session on human rights and equality standards, which was delivered to members of midlands Traveller organisation, in partnership with CAN
- a legal information session for representatives from civil society on a range of issues relating to equality law, including: taking cases to the Workplace Relations Commission; legal protections under the Employment Equality Acts and Equal Status Acts; the right of people with disabilities to reasonable accommodation in employment and when accessing services; and how to tackle gender discrimination in the workplace.
We also facilitated a CPD training event for members of the legal profession on ‘A Practitioner’s Guide to the Rights of Families at Inquests’, to better enable families to assert their rights during the inquest process, using our Information Note on the Rights of Families at Inquests, which was published in 2022. The event discussed the practical issues that coroners, practitioners, and in particular families, face during the course of an inquest.
Making information available in plain English
Plain English training was offered to all staff. We completed significant work on making more information on rights available in plain English by producing plain english factsheets on 16 different rights topics, as well as information on how to take a case to the WRC.
Addressing digital exclusion
We developed and produced a national campaign on ageism with messaging on digital exclusion.
Our Your Rights Information Service continues to be offered by phone and post, as well as online.
Our Website
We published a new website accessibility statement on our website in compliance with EU Accessibility Regulations and attended a number of training sessions run by the NDA to assist us to comply with the web accessibility directive.
We underwent specific digital document accessibility training, alongside our contracted designers, on how to improve the accessibility of our downloadable documents that are available via the website.
Building capacity of management to deal with human rights and equality issues in the workplace
All staff are required to complete our e-learning module on Equality and Human Rights in the Public Service. Five staff members completed the IPA Human Rights and Equality Diploma during the year, with a further four staff beginning in the academic year.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training was offered to all staff and three staff have completed the in Certificate in Diversity and Inclusion.
Staff also completed a range of training courses in inclusive leadership, coaching and organisational resilience.