Public service bodies came second only to licensed premises in complaints made against them under equality legislation, according to the Equality Authority's annual report. There were 171 complaints against public bodies under the Equal Status Act in 2003, compared with 272 against licensed premises. There were 124 complaints against educational institutions.
The public bodies complained against included the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs, health boards, local authorities and various other state departments and bodies.
The authority's chief executive, Mr Niall Crowley, said: "The public sector is well placed to set the standards and provide leadership in promoting equality.
"The experience of a statutory equality duty in the public sector in Northern Ireland to have due regard to equality in carrying out their function could usefully be transposed into Irish equality legislation."
Launching the report, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said that imposing such a positive statutory duty on public bodies was "a very worthwhile suggestion".
He said that the determinations and high awards in pregnancy-related discrimination cases sent out an unequivocal message that this kind of discrimination would not be tolerated.
He said that the role of the Equality Authority in promoting equality in society was one of its key strengths.
It had developed a campaign on reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities, emphasising their access to services like libraries, banks, post offices, shops and pharmacies. This approach was at the heart of the work of the authority, he said.
The report also showed that race emerged as the main ground for claims of discrimination at work in 2003. Thirty per cent of all cases under the Employment Equality Act complained of race discrimination, compared with 29 per cent on gender grounds.
A considerable number of these related to discrimination because of pregnancy, or sexual harassment.
Disability is the only ground that features significant numbers of complaints under both pieces of legislation, the Employment Equality Act and the Equal Status Act, referring respectively to employment and the provision of services. It accounted for 16 per cent of cases under the former act, and 17 per cent of cases under the latter.
Mr Crowley said that this reflected the failure of service providers to make "reasonable accommodation" for people with disabilities, and of employers to remove the barriers to their participation in the labour force. He welcomed the transposition of the EU Framework Employment Directive into Irish law, as this placed a higher onus on employers to make such "reasonable accommodation".
The Traveller community continues to make up the largest single category of people facing discrimination under the Equal Status Act, with 41 per cent of all claims coming from it. The complaints refer to access to schools, accommodation, shops and licensed premises. There were 10,799 queries to the authority's public information centre in 2003, and 65,109 publications were downloaded. Mr McDowell pointed out that more than half the queries related to the Parental Leave Act, the Maternity Protection Act and the Adoptive Leave Act. The authority's chairwoman, Ms Karen Erwin, said: "The Equality Authority is constantly challenged to make the case for equality and to set out a vision for a more equal society in a manner that secures an engagement from employers, service providers, trade unionists, equality organisations and people from across the nine grounds."