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Thanks very much.
I know time is tight, but I am a very quick speaker.
This isn’t a report; it isn’t a summary;
it isn’t really a concluding remark.
It’s a deeply biased version of what I’ve heard during the day.
And a deeply biased version of what I would like to have heard
during the day as well.
We’d have to acknowledge that during the boom time,
we did live in a very unequal country.
We have to acknowledge that because 5% of the population held 40% of the wealth.
6% of the population earned 28% of the income.
And yet now at a point of recession, we’ve reached a further low point
in our very limited ambitions for more equal society.
We’ve reached a point where minimum entitlements are under threat,
with cuts to basic social welfare payments.
A point where key public sector services, central to the wellbeing
and progress of people experiencing inequality are being cut back.
A point where funding programmes for the community sector
are being terminated.
A point where discrimination is increasing to a point where
in 2008 the Equality Tribunal reported the highest level ever of case files before it.
A point where the statutory equality and human rights infrastructure
has been rendered unviable.
This, I believe, is a deeply low point in our search for greater equality.
What I do think that today and this moment is about making this low point
a turning point for a more equal society.
And I think what we’ve heard during the day is the agenda for this turning point.
Karen Chouhan opened the day with an exhortation
that we should pay attention to economic recovery.
We know the reality:
inequality is deepening before our eyes;
the recession is having a disproportionate impact on groups experiencing inequality;
the responses to the recession
are having a disproportionate impact on groups experiencing inequality.
And she challenged us to take on and address what she called the CID agenda.
And I suppose you’d translate that into an Irish context
by challenging the NAMA agenda.
And the NAMA agenda would be
No equality,
Attack the public sector,
Mend the banks, and
Annihilate the community sector and the voice of those experiencing exclusion.
[applause]
This is a discourse we do need to challenge.
And challenging it…
I think Brian Harvey and Kathy gave us the starting point for that.
Challenging it is about asserting equality, not fairness,
asserting equality as a core value of this society,
and a core standard to guide us on the way forward.
We need to assert that by building alliances across civil society
to demand that change.
And I think the Equality and Rights Alliance is a very good example of that.
We need to make the case, as Karen Chouhan said, economic recovery
depends on equality measures.
It’s not a luxury.
We won’t get out of this economic recession without investing in equality.
We need to imagine and promote an equality based recovery,
a new model of development.
And I think we’ve been well served by a group called Is Féidir Linn in that regard,
in bringing forward an agenda for a more equal, inclusive and sustainable Ireland.
An agenda based on income equality, full employment,
adequate and effective public sector services and democratic reform.
Colm O’Cinneide then, I think, gave us a very clear message
that the statutory, equality and human rights are very important for this endeavour,
for this search for a more equal society.
I think he very usefully defined the bodies as ‘tax-payer funded change drivers’.
And he set out the job of the national human rights institutions,
the Equality Authority and the Human Rights Commission.
The job of these institutions is to be challenging.
They are performing their task best and delivering value for money
precisely when they question existing law and practice.
And I think that does raise serious questions as to whether
we are now getting value for money,
and whether now that the cutbacks have rendered these drivers for change
unviable at a moment when they are most needed.
Because it has sent out, and let’s be very clear about that, a very strong message,
and a message that has been heard, that equality is not important at this moment.
And we need to respond very strongly with a message that equality is important.
And part of that response, I think, is the focus for today’s conference
in terms of looking at, well, what are the institutional choices that we have?
Joanna, at the start, Joanna McMinn, said, challenged us and said
ERA was about imagining, constructing, devising
a new equality and rights infrastructure.
It’s not an agenda about repairing or trying to fix what’s now broken.
It’s an agenda about a new infrastructure, purpose built and
fit for the current context that we find ourselves in.
And I think in terms of desining that, again Karen Chouhan at the start
gave us a useful pointer when she said:
“there is a need to co-ordinate measures to alleviate poverty
with measures to combat discrimination.”
In Ireland we do the exact opposite: we fragment them.
For poverty we have an office of social inclusion,
a national action plan on social inclusion.
For equality we have anti-discrimination legislation, and an equality authority.
Two separate strands, two different approaches
for what are deeply interlinked issues of justice in our society.
That we won’t get equality without an integrated and interlinked pursuit
of redistribution and equality and access to resources,
a strategy to address powerlessness and equality in access to influence,
a strategy to address recognition and equality in the status and standing
of the different groups in our society.
When we fragment that agenda, and those three elements of injustice,
we limit the effectiveness and impact of our endeavours.
We allow as well for progress to be made in one area
and to hide the lack of progress in other areas.
If you look back over the last ten years we did make progress
in relation to recognition,
but it hid a deep lack, an absence of any progress whatsoever
in relation to redistribution.
So we got a more equal unequal society out of economic boom.
In terms institutional choices, the workshop I was in
and the reports from the other workshops, have emphasised caution
in relation to any idea about unified structures.
That equality and human rights, any sort of merger, as was proposed
and as was resisted, is about diminishing the focus and effect
and impact of each of those.
But I do think there’s an emerging agenda that is about bringing together
those different dimensions of equality, those different injustices
that make up the unequal nature of our society;
bringing together the focus on social inclusion and equality.
And that could be the basis for the new start that people
have been talking about during the day.
It’s not about repair; it’s about new institutions, a new infrastructure,
and above all a new start that sends out a very different message.
No institutional choice will be worth anything
if we don’t solve the problem of independence.
And Brian Harvey pointed out in his input how very quickly independence emerged
as the issue from the October 2008 budget.
Not effectiveness and resources, but independence.
And that’s what went down on October 2008, the independence of the bodies.
And that’s what was lost.
We won’t get independence without addressing issues of accountability
and a direct accountability to the Oireachtas.
We won’t get independence without addressing issues of leadership
and better means of appointing, a more transparent means of appointing,
the leadership to these bodies.
And we won’t get independence without good design and
proper legal structures that enable independence.
Equally though we do need to keep an eye on effectiveness.
It isn’t that independence emerges as the dominant issue
but effectiveness still remains the issue.