FORMER EQUALITY Authority chief executive Niall Crowley has accused the Government of using the recession to dismantle gains made for equality in recent years.
He said gains made by groups experiencing inequality were “disappearing before our very eyes” over a short period of time. People working in the sector were afraid to criticise the cuts “but they’re also afraid to speak out and say that they are being threatened if they do criticise”, Mr Crowley claimed.
“We talk a lot about the economic crisis but we have, linked to that and under the cover of that, a very significant equality crisis,” he said.
“We now have an economic crisis that is rapidly deepening . . . as we dismantle the equality infrastructure, deepening as the Combat Poverty Agency and the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism are abolished, deepening as the Equality Authority and the Irish Human Rights Commission are in effect both rendered unviable due to disproportionate budget cuts.”
Mr Crowley resigned from the Equality Authority in December following a 43 per cent budget cut and the decentralisation of the office to Co Tipperary.
He said last weekend’s announcement by Green Party leader John Gormley that the decentralisation plan had been halted and funding would be reviewed was “very important”, and the key challenge was to ensure that this happened. “Will it be implemented at all? Will it be implemented in good faith? Will it be implemented in a way that actually genuinely does reverse the situation?” he asked.
Asked if he would consider returning to the Equality Authority if the cuts were reversed, Mr Crowley said: “I think it’s too early to even consider something like that.” He urged people to “watch the watchdogs” and ensure that bodies that had been hit by cuts were performing and were having an impact.
Mr Crowley was speaking at an Amnesty International Ireland event in Dublin with the theme “Challenging the roll-back on human rights”.
Noeleen Hartigan of Amnesty International said there had been “a systematic dismantling of the human rights and equality framework, the same framework that the Irish Government is extremely proud of when it’s talking to the UN”.
She said the Government did not like ordinary people having the power to challenge public servants when their rights were denied. Nor did they like being told by the Human Rights Commission that they were complicit in the torture of men in Guantánamo.
Amnesty’s Irish section also launched a handbook on human rights for community activists and non-governmental organisations.
