Sir, - I read with mild dismay (The Irish Times, November 12th) that the European Court of Justice had upheld the legality of "positive discrimination" for public service promotions. It is undeniably laudable to seek to achieve an equitable balance between women and men in employment. However, surely positive discrimination, as its very title suggests, is as invidious as the undoubted injustice which it strives to remedy.
To select one candidate for promotion ahead of another in this inequitable manner is not to cure the problem of sex discrimination, but rather to perpetuate and legitimise the very arbitrariness which ought to be eliminated.
The noble end of equality will never be properly served as long as the sex of an applicant remains a factor, either in a "positive" or a "negative" sense. Equality policy ought more properly to dictate that the question of one's sex should play no part at all in the assessment of one's ability to do a particular job. The shameful fact that discrimination has taken place in one direction in the past should never be a justification for continuing the practice in the opposite direction in the future. - Yours etc,
Hillcrest Park, Dublin 11.