AN NUI Galway law lecturer has criticised Green Party leader John Gormley for failing to be “fully honest” in his promise to reverse cuts to the Equality Authority.
The same authority is “beginning to look like a bunch of well-meaning foxes charged with responsibility for minimising discrimination in hen houses”, law lecturer Donncha O’Connell said.
Strategic equality casework may be best handled by a non-governmental organisation independent of State interference, Mr O’Connell proposed.
He was speaking at a public lecture on equality in a time of crisis, hosted by NUIG’s Development Education and Research Network, which was also addressed by former Equality Authority chief executive Niall Crowley.
Mr Crowley resigned from the authority last December over the refusal by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern to halt funding cuts and decentralisation of the body.
The promised review by “An Bord Snip” of the authority’s budgetary situation is “cold comfort to those who see the task of that body as one of going out and identifying further opportunities for public spending cuts”, Mr O’Connell said.
“To suggest that decentralisation of the Equality Authority to Roscrea will cease – now that it has taken place – is equally uncomforting, in the absence of any commitment to reverse this utterly pointless and counterproductive decentralisation,” he said.
“This is not the kind of thing that any self-respecting smaller party of Government should try to pass off as a meaningful concession. In fact, to do so is to fail to be fully honest with those whose interests and rights are directly undermined by the defenestration of the Equality Authority.”
Speaking about a new equality infrastructure, Mr Crowley said any new statutory body would have to be structurally independent and resourced to reflect current levels of reported discrimination and poverty.
