I am glad to have an opportunity to contribute to this debate. Indeed I welcome all of the contributions made to the debate. Having listened to many, I have to admit that there appears to be a basic element of agreement on the necessity for this debate and the attributes of the Bill. As Deputy Therese Ahearn has just said, it would be very difficult for people to understand how Fianna Fáil backbenchers could praise this Bill — and to judge by their contributions 95 per cent accept the aspirations of this Bill and praise its aims — but when the test comes at 8.30 p.m. that they should toe the line and do as instructed by the Minister for Labour.
The decision of the Government to refuse this Bill a Second Reading is regrettable. I am quite happy to accept that there is room for improvement in this Bill, but that is the nature of legislation. I should like to feel that whenever any Government Minister introduces legislation in this House he does so on the basis that the function of the House is to improve on it. After all, what would be the purpose of debate in this House if Members' views — each one of whom benefits from their individual experiences, knowledge and expertise — were not taken into account? Basically it would be a total charade if the Minister of the day was not prepared to listen and to seek co-operation in improving legislation introduced in this House.
The preparation of this Bill, which took place over a number of months, involved widespread consultation with many interest groups, with many sectors of our society interested in the widespread inequality that obtains in our society. Through consultation advice, information and direction from the many groups who have been involved in equality cases over the years, we sought to eradicate such inequality as it obtains right across our society. When we went out from Leinster House to meet the many groups involved, ranging from the Employment Equality Agency to others, in preparation of legislation in fighting individual cases, in endeavouring to eliminate discrimination where it obtained, we found there was no shortage of examples of discrimination in our society. Regrettably, it is occasionally difficult for people to see the wood from the trees; people are not aware of the blatant discrimination that obtains because they take so many things for granted. It is only when one begins to look and to examine in detail — and the opportunities for examination were many — one discovers circumstances in which such discrimination exists. In many circumstances people are totally oblivious of the discrimination obtaining in our society. It involves a whole process of endeavouring to change attitudes, endeavouring to bring about an awareness in our society leading to the elimination of the discrimination that obtains.
I have to say that the attitude of the Government is difficult to understand. I do not exaggerate when I say I am astonished at their attitude. Only a matter of weeks ago the Taoiseach came before the House and the people declaring that this would be a new style of Government, an open style of Government, that there would be no secrets, no hidden agenda. I should have thought this type of Bill was one that they would have been prepared to take on board, that they would at least give it a Second Reading and put it before a committee of this House. In the case of the Judicial Separation Bill, the Government themselves were slow to bring a Bill before the House. It was originally introduced by Deputy Shatter of Fine Gael, and the process of Special Committee of this House a much improved Bill was eventually passed.
The Government have offered no concrete excuse for rejecting this Bill. Some nit-picking took place in regard to the impracticality of certain provisions but no concrete reasons were offered by the Government during the course of this debate as to why this Bill should be rejected. I do not accept, as has been alleged by Government Ministers, that acceptance of this Bill would in some way damage the integrity of existing legislation. I find that proposition extremely difficult to understand, and I do not accept it. The Labour Party have tremendous difficulty in accepting such a proposition. I say to the Government that that is a very lame excuse for not accepting this Bill.
If the Government believe they have strong grounds for rejecting the Bill then the legal advice available to them should be put before this House. The legal advice setting out the reasons they should reject the Bill which I presume they sought from the Attorney General's office, should be made available to the Members of this House. I strongly believe that this legislation was carefully drafted. It pulls together existing legislation in the area of inequality. The Labour Party set out to update that legislation. The Minister of State at the Department of Justice will be aware that most of our legislation in the equality area dates back to the seventies. If nothing else, this legislation should be updated and revised. In this respect, the Government would have been doing a good day's work if they had been prepared to take the Bill on board, put it to a committee of this House and bring it back before this House for further improvement.
The Labour Party have a difficulty — this has been highlighted in recent Supreme Court decisions — with the apparent inability or unwillingness of this House to accept certain pieces of legislation. The recent Supreme Court judgment and, in particular, the remarks made by Mr. Justice McCarthy, should be taken very seriously by all Deputies who have a responsibility not just to the immediacy of their constituency work but also to legislation and ensuring that it is updated and improved as often as possible.
We have been fortunate in terms of our Constitution and its validity. Our Constitution has stood the test of time but times takes its toll on all legal documentation. Our Constitution which was acceptable to a reasonably small proportion of the population in 1937 obviously needs to be updated to meet the exigencies of the nineties. A major review of our Constitution by a committee of this House in the sixties made very clear recommendations. Unfortunately, we have not acted on these. It is a shame on parties on all sides of this House that they did not avail of the opportunity to implement these recommendations. The very clear directions, message and signal given by Mr. Justice McCarthy in his recent Supreme Court decision indicate the need for us to operate in a new atmosphere.
It is very obvious from the way legislation has been processed in this House that sadly we have tended to wait for directions from Europe. It is incumbent on all political parties and the Independents to change the style of this House. Rather than wait to be driven by Europe we should take the responsibility ourselves. We should undertake to rectify the obvious and glaring omissions in the area of legislation rather than wait for Europe to give us a direction. Headlines such as those in our newspaper today about the Irish morality plays which are being acted out before the European Courts do no good for any of us, do no justice to this country and do nothing for the people we represent.
Much work has been done in the area of equality but unfortunately commission reports have not been acted upon. The Second Commission on the Status of Women will bring more urgent matters before this House. I would like to think that this House will take on their responsibility in regard to these matters. I certainly felt, as I said in the House in response to the initial statements by the Taoiseach when he took office, that this House would adopt a new perspective in regard to important issues and that we would be more open with one another when dealing with difficult issues. Given the Taoiseach's reaction in recent days I have to admit that I am beginning to wonder whether the aspirations he expounded both inside and outside this House in the early days after his succession to the leadership of Fianna Fáil will be followed through. The Taoiseach had a golden opportunity of showing that his new style of Government had substance by instructing his Minister for Labour to come before the House and say that the Government were prepared to take on board the aims and aspirations of the Equal Status Bill presented by the Labour Party. It is regrettable that he has not availed of that opportunity.
Despite the reluctance of the Government to co-operate with us during the course of the debate I have to admit it is my strong conviction that it will not be long before a similar Bill is brought before the House either by the Government or an Opposition party and we will be discussing these issues again. We cannot continue to sweep these issues under the carpet. I do not believe people outside this House will accept this from us. This House will have to undertake a programme of reform in these areas.
This legislation sets out wider areas of discrimination than any legislation previously brought before the House. It sets out to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sex, marital or parental status, sexual orientation, religion, age, handicap, race, colour, nationality or national or ethnic origin, including membership of the travelling community. It is only right that these provisions should be very wide. It is extremely important to ensure that this Bill is totally inclusive and that there are no exclusions. The second object of the Bill is to make discrimination unlawful not only in the workplace but also in education, in the provision of goods, facilities and services, including recreational, banking and other financial services, entertainment, accommodation, transport and the services of any trade or profession and in the disposal or management of premises.
The Labour Party set out very deliberately to ensure that this Bill would be extremely wide. Given that the Bill covers such a wide area of Irish life, it is incomprehensible to think that the Government were not able to come into the House and say there were parts of the Bill they could accept and on which they were prepared to work so that they could be improved. As I said at the outset, many people listening to the debate may wonder where the examples of discrimination to which I have referred exist. These are well documented and recorded. Sadly, we have been very slow to address these issues. That is the main purpose of the Bill. There is a responsibility on all Deputies to address these matters urgently.
We also define three types of discrimination — direct, indirect and victimisation. Obviously quite a lot of this is self-explanatory, but we set out to ensure that no area of Irish life, ranging from entertainment to sex, handicap, race and colour, was excluded. With the help of the legal advisers available to the Labour Party this is one of the most comprehensive Bills to be introduced in this House. If we had set out to introduce the Bill on a rushed basis or without due consideration, I could understand that the legal advisers to the Government, the Attorney General and others, might have difficulty in relation to the acceptability of the Bill at this time. However, that is not the case. The Bill has been in course of preparation for a long time, a process of preparation which involved widespread negotiation and consultation. We set out to reflect the views of many people working in areas where discrimination manifests itself, and I would say that many Members of this House have perhaps never come into contact with those areas. I strongly recommend to the Members of the House — and to Cabinet Ministers — that if they travelled around the city they would see where discrimination exists, including lack of access to legal facilities. They would see people who have extreme difficulty in coping with day-to-day situations because of the widespread discrimination in society.
As I said at the outset, we have an obligation to remedy these situations. We have responsibility in this regard and we also have the opportunity — it is before the House at present — to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, the attitude of the Government is, perhaps, consistent with the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party in relation to these issues, as they are having difficulty in dealing with very basic issues before this House. As we discovered on the Order of Business this morning, there are many areas where the Government are afraid or unprepared to bring legislation before this House. Despite a speech made by the former Taoiseach, Deputy Haughey, at the Ard-Fhéis early last year which seemed to herald a new era and in which he promised all sorts of new, reforming legislation, sadly and regrettably not one shred of that legislation has been brought before this House. I could never be accused of being a great admirer of the former Taoiseach — I was perhaps one of his strongest critics — but in that speech he gave indications that he was prepared to take on some of the very serious issues facing us. We were promised a simple measure to update our family planning legislation. We are still being promised it, but I doubt, from what we heard on the Order of Business today, that we will see it within the lifetime of this Government. I find that very difficult to understand or to take. I have very serious worries about the Government's ability to deal with the very serious issues consequent on the recent Supreme Court decision which are facing the Government, and the Government have no choice but to deal with them. However, unless and until the Government introduce simple legislation to update our family planning legislation, I question the bona fides of the Taoiseach or indeed of the Minister for Health.
In updating this legislation and before introducing the Bill in the House we consulted people on a widespread basis. Indeed, many of the provisions in the Bill are a response to suggestions made by the Employment Equality Agency and many other interested groups which have been well documented and recorded down through the years. The net effect of the work we have done, in the eyes of any legal commentator, will greatly strengthen the legislative code as it exists at present in relation to discrimination.
It has been said, and accepted by most contributors to the debate, that this Bill aims to go a great deal further than any previous legislation on discrimination. It has, to my knowledge, been welcomed by every organisation representing women in the State and by the great majority of the organisations representing disadvantaged minorities. I do not recall hearing any serious objections from any group representing people outside this House. If adopted I am convinced that the Bill will place Ireland at the forefront of European member states in terms of our attitude to discrimination and inequality. Unfortunately, as things exist, we are very far from that position. I will give one instance by way of clarification. Ireland is still today unable to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. We signed that convention nearly 25 years ago, but sadly we cannot ratify it until we adopt legislation to enable individuals or groups in Ireland to claim legal protection against discrimination. That is one obvious example of the ground we must make up in this whole area. Until we are in a position to ratify conventions like that, Ireland will not be able to say that it has a society free from discrimination or intolerance. Even after we take the necessary legislative steps to put ourselves in that position, we will still have an awful lot of work to do.
For as long as Ireland remains a country where the average woman at work earns two-thirds of the pay of the average man, for as long as Ireland remains a country where women have little or no hope of rising to the top in business or the public service, for as long as Ireland remains an economy which has a heavy dependence on its ability to exploit low paid and part-time women workers — for as long as these conditions exist we cannot afford to lightly turn our back on legislation like the Equal Status Bill.
I repeat my assertion that this is a fundamentally important Bill where women are concerned. But it is not just confined to women, neither is it confined to the workplace. This Bill would have fundamental effects on our attitudes to a wide range of people across the whole spectrum of Irish life. It would force us to confront attitudes that have been hidden for too long.
To illustrate what I mean, I want to refer to just two situations. I want to do so by quoting to this House extracts from a pamphlet published within the last week by the Attic Press. The title of this pamphlet is Repulsing Racism — Reflections on Racism and the Irish and it was written by a woman born in India who has chosen to spend her adult life in Ireland and to raise her family here. In that pamphlet she writes passionately about her own experience, in the following way:
Skin colour and sexism have been paramount in the evolving of my blueprint. My inner self has been defined and constantly re-defined by me and for me, in relation to the "superior white other". Being perceived as inferior has left me with an abiding sense of inadequacy and guilt which is only slowly decreasing. I have often been subjected to a type of inverted racism which disregards the cultures which have formed me. Because I am middle class, do not speak English with a broken accent and do not wear any particular national costume, I am often regarded as "not really Indian", "not Irish", a "West Brit", "not coloured, because you're like us". What is perceived as an identifying feature about me is used, consciously or unconsciously, to discriminate by either inclusion or exclusion. There is an assumption among many Irish people that those whose skin colour is different "aspire" to adopt a "superior, less primitive" culture.
Against that background, Gretchen Fitzgerald has examined in detail the experience of discrimination under a number of headings. I want to refer to just two.
There are 21,000 travellers in Ireland who have a distinct identity, culture and lifestyle. Their lifestyle, particularly its nomadic quality, is the most controversial and the one that we are least inclined to accept. Most objective observers would recognise that the prejudice and discrimination against travellers is similar to that practised by white people against black people. Just because travellers are the same colour as we are, does not protect them against racist thinking and behaviour, which is based on the ethnic and cultural differences between travellers and those of us who are settled.
Gretchen Fitzgerald poses the question: "How many of us personally know, socialise with, or can count a traveller among our friends?" It is a disturbing question, and I suspect not too many of us can honestly say that we are entirely free of the prejudice against travellers which permeates a great deal of official policy. For as long as the statistics continue to show a high infant mortality rate, short life expectancy, frequent hospitalisation, high unemployment and widespread illiteracy among travellers, we will not be able to say that we have ended that period of prejudice in our history.
The point is well made in the pamphlet that women travellers bear a double burden of oppression. They are discriminated against by men who hold the balance of power in the travelling community, and the discrimination which settled women experience in relation to education, employment and work is felt even more acutely by traveller women. Their domestic situation, of course, is frequently compounded by the quality of their accommodation and by lack of access to water, sanitation and other facilities which even the most disadvantaged settled people take for granted.
The other area of discrimination that I want to refer to before concluding is the whole area of aliens, immigrants and refugees. The status, rights and obligations of aliens in this country are all determined by legislation. Under our existing legislation, aliens and immigrants into Ireland effectively have no rights. The legislation is administered by and large by the aliens section of the Department of Justice, who have very wide discretion to enforce restrictions on the entry, landing, freedom of movement, explusion and deportation of aliens in the State.
The point has been made to me on several occasions by aliens that in Ireland they feel often as if they were in South Africa and subject to the pass laws of the Apartheid regime. Aliens — and, it has to be said, especially aliens with a different skin colour — can tell countless stories of harassment directed at them by the Irish State. That harassment can often be worse than the kind of victimisation that can be suffered at the hands of some landlords and other private providers of services.
Ireland is a country where none of the international agreements concerning refugees has been given effect in our laws. All applications for refugee status and political asylum are determined by the Department of Justice. But no information is available as to what criteria the Department apply to applications for refugee status and political asylum. There are no clear, public and enforceable procedures in relation to refugees and the refugee or asylum seeker has no protection under Irish law. As the Minister of State at the Department of Justice is in the House perhaps he could take it on himself to look at this area and then come back with some recommendations as a matter of urgency.
The issues of travellers and aliens are just two issues which highlight the need for us to address the question of discrimination in a fundamental and soul-searching way. We cannot do it by legislation alone. The Churches, the media, the education system — all have their role to play in changing attitudes and in encouraging and fostering a climate in Ireland where respect for human dignity is paramount.
If we cannot face up to the need to legislate to address our own shortcomings then we have failed the first test. That is why I conclude the debate tonight with a sense of regret because when the Government had to face their first test they sadly failed. I am not sure how the Taoiseach and his Cabinet Ministers will respond to the many issues dealt with in the Bill which are constantly arising and will continue to be raised again both inside and outside this House by the many interest groups working in the area of inequality and discrimination.
As I said at the outset, and it is worth repeating, this is basically the first test the Government have had to face. The Government will be confronted with another in relation to other issues consequent on the recent Supreme Court decision. That seems to have frozen the Government into some form of inactivity and a degree of silence which does nothing to strengthen democracy in this country and does nothing to strengthen the working of this House. Amid the fanfare of the Taoiseach's taking up office we were promised openess and honesty and that all the issues confronting Irish society would be faced up to. The issues have been set out clearly and directly, after a great deal of consultation and consideration in this Bill. These issues will confront the Government on a day-to-day basis.
We have not heard from Fianna Fáil's colleagues in Government on this issue. As they like to take the role of riding shotgun on the Government in order to keep them on the straight and narrow, as they claim to do on occasion, this was a golden opportunity for them to set out their views on these issues. Is it because these issues do not have economic urgency which the Progressive Democrats claim as their area, that they have no contribution to make on these very serious issues?
To deal with these issues requires courage and, on occasion, they may lead to political unpopularity but that is not an excuse for Members not to face up to them. These issues cannot constantly be swept under the carpet by Government. As I said at the outset, discrimination and abuse of privilege exists right across Irish society and I urge the members of Cabinet and Members of the House to go out and see for themselves.
There is an obligation on us to legislate for these situations. It is not satisfactory merely to have a debate. It would have been far more satisfactory if the Government had taken a positive role, accepted the suggestions made and allowed further discussion and consultation by way of a committee of this House. If the Minister of State takes his task seriously, because he is responsible for law reform, he will come back to the House within a short period of time with a Bill on similar lines.
