Minister pledges to aid equality agencies

GREEN PARTY Minister of State Mary White has said it is her “absolute wish” that no further cuts be made in the budgets of agencies that deal with equality issues.

The Irish Human Rights Commission and the Equality Authority were two of the first organisations to suffer the brunt of Government cutbacks.

Yesterday Ms White defended the Green Party’s position when attending the launch of the human rights commission’s annual report.

The commission had its budget cut by 32 per cent while the Equality Authority’s chief executive Niall Crowley resigned in protest at a 43 per cent cut to its funding in the 2009 budget.

In addition, Combat Poverty was abolished and the consultative committee on racism was stood down.

Equality campaigners accused the Government and, in particular, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, of pursuing an agenda against such organisations.

Ms White, who is now the Minister of State with special responsibility for equality, human rights and integration, said there was nothing to be gained from looking back.

“We are working now towards the budget and we have to try to make sure that we have a very even hand,” she said.

“In the areas of my competence, I will be looking at where severe cuts were put in place in the last budget and try and protect those institutions as far as possible.”

Ms White said she would be bringing forward an initiative to monitor racism in the Republic and determine the extent to which it is prevalent, but it would not involve monitoring done by the Garda as many foreign nationals did not believe in going to the police.

“I’m coming up with something innovative that has not been tried before.

“It is slightly under wraps until I dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s,” she said.

“It will certainly give an indication if there are low levels of racist incidents or xenophobia or downright ugly incidents of racism in our country.”

Speaking at the launch of the commission’s annual report for 2009, its president, Dr Maurice Manning, said funding cuts were a problem but “we’re going to fight our way through it”.

The commission’s budget was cut from €2.342 million in 2008 to €1.6 million last year.

He said it was able to keep going with the support of Atlantic Philanthropies last year, which funded its education awareness programme.

Dr Manning said the caseload of the commission increased last year, and gave the lie to some suggestions that such bodies were a “luxury the country can ill-afford” in times of recession.

Ireland’s human rights record is set to be scrutinised by the UN next year under the universal period review.

The commission said the Government must make a number of voluntary pledges in advance of the review.

These include ending slopping out in Irish jails by 2012 and the ratification by 2012 of the UN Convention on the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities.