Fighting for the rights of minorities

Po-faced, politically correct puritan or diligent defender of equal rights? Will the real Niall Crowley please stand up? In truth, the head of the Equality Authority has found himself all things to all people in the past fortnight - depending on where they themselves are coming from.

The mild-mannered 44-year-old has been thrust into the media spotlight after his equality watchdog body took a successful landmark case against Ryanair for ageism. The airline was told to pay £8,000 compensation for breaching the Employment Equality Act by advertising in The Irish Times for a "young" and dynamic professional.

The judgment was lampooned as "ludicrous" by a Sunday Independent columnist, Brendan O'Connor, who mockingly suggested that the next stop would be fat ballet dancers, tone-deaf singers and stuttering newsreaders.

Crowley fought back, accusing the Sunday Independent of misrepresenting the importance of ageism in the workplace. This reflected the paper's editorial policy of giving "free rein to journalists who wish to attack and ridicule minority groups", he said.

Then into the fray stepped The Irish Times columnist Kevin Myers and his radio colleague, Eamon Dunphy. On his Today FM radio programme last Tuesday, Dunphy accused Crowley of lacking humour and monitoring the media. Did you ever see Monty Python's Flying Circus and its mockery of disabled people and city gents, asked Dunphy.

"The whole idea of humour and satire, it's savage," he said, his voice growing increasingly shrill. "We don't need f . . . . s like you telling us what we can do. It's savage. It's a savage world out there. You have no right to be monitoring it."

Crowley, on the end of a phone line, kept his cool. However, those who know him say the focus on his personality rather than the issue of discrimination would make him feel very uncomfortable.

Others say that Crowley, a veteran campaigner for Travellers' rights, is well able for the slings and arrows and welcomes the public airing of discrimination issues.

Crowley was co-director of Pavee Point, the national Travellers' resource centre, before joining the Equality Authority as its chief executive in 1999. The authority has a statutory duty to combat discrimination and promote equality of opportunity both in employment and the provision of services and goods.

It provides advice and professional help and can also bring cases to the office of the Director of Equality Investigations - a separate investigative body which made the ruling in the Ryanair case.

Crowley is well liked by staff and his management style is described as conciliatory and inclusive.

"I don't know if you'll find anybody to say a bad word about him," says Fintan Farrell, a friend and former colleague from the Irish Traveller Movement. "He does things in a way that isn't pushy or saying `I know the way forward'. He's always checking back with people and there's no sense of him running away from the group."

The Labour Party's general secretary, Mike Allen, says it is ironic that Crowley, so long the bane of civil servants and State agencies, is now being cast by critics as an establishment figure.

"That's a complete misunderstanding of where he's coming from . . . he's been very much the outsider for the past 10 years arguing against the mainstream. He has stood up for the rights of people getting a very hard time in society."

Crowley comes from a privileged Dublin background. His father, also called Niall, was the chairman of Allied Irish Bank. He grew up in Herbert Park and went to Gonzaga College in Mill town and Trinity College, where he studied civil engineering. It was during his last year at Trinity in 1979 that he began working as a volunteer in the Simon Community's night shelters.

After graduation, he worked for design engineers Ove Arup for four years before volunteering for overseas development work in the former Portuguese colony, Mozambique.

Crowley has said his overseas experience stimulated his interest in community work as a means of achieving social change. When he returned home in 1986, he did a diploma in youth and community work in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

CROWLEY'S career in the community sector began with the Dublin Travellers Education and Development Group, now known as Pavee Point. Its director, Ronnie Fay, says one of his biggest achievements for Travellers rights was his work on the Task Force for Travelling People which reported in July 1995, and for the first time recognised Traveller culture.

He also became involved during the 1990s in the umbrella body, the Community Workers Co-Op where he was one of the main strategists for ensuring that the interests of marginalised groups found their way into government policy.

One civil servant who dealt with him on social policy issues during the 1990s describes him as dogged in pursuing what he wants. "He was sometimes difficult to deal with because he won't let go," she said. "but he's good to negotiate with because he sees the limits of what he can do. He's quick to spot when you've got as far as you can go on things."

Former colleagues say Crowley is a very clear and strategic thinker, more concerned with making progress and convincing people of the importance of his case than indulging in posturing or banging tables.

Allen, who was until recently general secretary of the Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed, recalls a meeting of the National Economic and Social Forum in the mid-1990s.

"It was the last stage of the report and the meeting started at 2.30 p.m. He came with well over 100 amendments. By eight o'clock he was on about amendment number 90. His commitment to arguing the point and the case for every point he wanted to make was very strong," he says.

While his genuine commitment to equality issues is not doubted, he has a tendency to be verbose and lapse into overly technical community-sector speak which assumes that people know what he is talking about. "Because of the way he uses language, people can sometimes get frustrated about what he wants," says a one-time fellow negotiator.

Crowley is married with two children and lives off the South Circular Road in Dublin. He speaks fluent Portuguese from his time in Mozambique and holidays regularly in Portugal. He enjoys the cinema, eating out and socialising with his children and five siblings.

Does he, as his detractors claim, take himself too seriously? No, reply his supporters, who ask why it is that someone who objects to something offensive, is always described as lacking humour.

Friends says Crowley's sense of humour is "quiet and intelligent". "He's not the sort of person you'd sit in the pub chatting to," says the civil servant. "He won't walk into a room and crack a joke and he's not the life and soul of the party," says Allen, "but he can laugh at himself. To be po-faced means to be pompous and self-important. He takes what he's doing seriously but he doesn't take himself in doing that seriously."