Niall Crowley discusses the implications of dismantling Ireland’s equality pillars at a time when they matter more than ever
Equality bodieS, equality legislation and community organisations face cutbacks, backlash and closure. These are deemed to be luxuries, only to be afforded in the good times. We should be concerned.
This equality infrastructure is a key component of our democracy. Such legislation establishes a minimal but valuable standard of non-discrimination to govern public and private sector organisations. Equality bodies provide one key means of calling the State and the private sector to account over this standard.
At the same time, community organisations provide valuable platforms from which groups experiencing inequality can articulate and advance their interests.
However, we have a Government giving full vent to a backlash against equality. In doing so, this Government is undermining our democracy.
Accountability has been diminished by rendering the Equality Authority unviable. This does not mean an Equality Authority that does nothing, but one that can no longer work to a scale or a standard necessary to make any convincing impact on discrimination.
This accountability has been further diminished with the closure of the Combat Poverty Agency and the NCCRI.
Advocacy has been damaged by an undermining of the viability of the community sector. Community organisations have had their funding cut. Their future and independence have been compromised under a new funding programme that places them under the control of local area based partnerships. Fear for the future also serves as a barrier to independent advocacy.
This is a low point in the search for a more equal Ireland. It is bad for the many groups that experience inequality. It is bad for society as this inequality compromises educational attainment, life expectancy, community trust and mental health across the whole of society. It is bad for our prospects of economic recovery given the importance of equality to growing GDP and to business success.
We need to seek the opportunities to make this low point a turning point. A key starting point in responding to this challenge would be to address the current policy fragmentation between poverty and equality issues.
Poverty and identity based discrimination are two distinct forms of injustice. However, they are linked in that both serve to block the participation of different groups in society – poverty due to lack of economic means, and discrimination due to exclusion on the basis of group membership and failure to accord status to this group membership. Both injustices are often experienced simultaneously.
When we divide the response to poverty from the response to identity-based discrimination, we diminish the prospects for advancing equality. This fragmentation makes for inadequate policy responses to issues that are interlinked, and divides the movement seeking a more equal Ireland. It will be important now to seek and secure an integrated response to poverty and inequality.
We need a new equality institution that would combine the powers and functions of the Equality Authority and the Combat Poverty Agency. This mandate should cover the full spectrum of equality issues in the distribution of resources, the recognition of difference and the apportioning of influence.
We need new equality legislation that would prohibit discrimination on the grounds of socio economic status alongside the nine grounds currently covered.
The new legislation would also need to require public sector bodies to take practical steps to advance equality on this new ground and the other nine grounds.
We need to build a new social movement for equality that would bring together organisations working on poverty issues and on equality issues behind a shared agenda.
This movement also needs to be active across sectors, bringing trade unions, environmental organisations and community organisations together behind the demand for a more equal, inclusive and sustainable Ireland.
Niall Crowley is the former chief executive of the Equality Authority
