The Equality Authority today hosted a seminar to discuss the findings of the recent Central Statistics Office special survey on equality. This nationally representative survey examined the reported experience of discrimination of people of the age of 18 years and over.
Niall Crowley, CEO of the Equality Authority, highlighted that “the first clear challenge posed by the survey on equality relates to the scale of the resources we are allocating as a society to eliminating discrimination. The scale of resources deployed does not match the scale of the problem now uncovered by this survey”.
The survey found that in the fourth quarter of 2004:-
- almost 382,000 (12.5% of those aged 18 years or over) felt they had experienced discrimination in the 2 years period prior to the survey.
- of these 264,700 had experienced discrimination on one of the nine grounds covered by equality legislation.
- the majority of these people stated that they had experienced discrimination more than once in the period covered.
In responding to the scale and the nature of the discrimination uncovered by the survey, Niall Crowley called for the further development of our equality infrastructure including:-
- “an expansion of the grounds covered by the equality legislation given that 31% of those reporting discrimination had experienced this discrimination on grounds other than those covered by the equality legislation.
- new investment to support trade unions and community organisations to provide advocacy supports to those experiencing discrimination given that nearly 60% of those who had experienced discrimination had taken no action in relation to their experience.
- the introduction of positive duties in the equality legislation that would require both the public sector and the private sector to take action that proactively promotes equality and thus prevents discrimination occurring in the first place.”
The survey has implications for action by employers and service providers. Niall Crowley emphasised “a particular challenge to service providers to promote equality and combat discrimination given that nearly two thirds of the discrimination reported related to service provision.” He emphasised the importance of:-
- “the social partners, in particular Congress and IBEC– to providing leadership on the issue of equality in service provision through the National Workplace Strategy.
- network organisations within the service provision sectors where significant discrimination was found in the survey, including the financial sector, the public sector, licensed premises and shops, to work with the Equality Authority to prepare equality action plans for their sector”.
Niall Crowley identified “a particular challenge to the Equality Authority in responding to the low levels of consciousness of rights among those experiencing discrimination that is revealed by the survey”. The survey found that 19.8% of the population had no understanding of their rights under equality legislation and 52.7% only had a little understanding. He announced that the Equality Authority was developing “a new public awareness campaign to further develop this consciousness of rights under the equality legislation.”
Ends
The Equality Authority is mandated to promote equality and eliminate discrimination in the workplace and in the provision of goods and services.