Republican News · Thursday 26 June 2003

Equality Coalition brings campaign to Minister

The Coalition for Equality, a growing alliance of organisations representing groups protected by the Equal Status Act and the trade union movement, is accelerating its campaign against changes to Irish equality legislation contained in the Intoxicating Liquor Bill 2003 by protesting today outside the offices of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

The Coalition has repeated its call for Minister McDowell to remove from his proposals to deal with regulating alcohol sales, unrelated proposals which the groups says will greatly undermine the effectiveness of anti-discrimination legislation.

"Not only will the proposed changes diminish the rights to an effective means of redress to many victims of discrimination, but they are likely to have the indirect of greatly reducing the capacity of the Equality Authority to carry out its functions across the broad range of discrimination areas, including discrimination in employment," say protest organisers.

The protest rally is due to be addressed by a number of speakers including Joan Carmichael of the ICTU, Martin Collins of Pavee Point, Mary Keogh of the Forum of People with Disabilities and Kensiko Monshengo of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI).