Human rights body queries merger proposal

THE PRESIDENT of the Human Rights Commission has questioned how any major savings could be made by merging various equality bodies into a single agency.

Commenting on reports that the Government is proposing to create a new agency incorporating the Human Rights Commission, the Equality Authority and other groups, Maurice Manning said that although he had an open mind about the idea, no firm proposals had yet been made.

"If there are savings to be made, we'd be happy to look at them. But we don't believe there are too many. The two bodies to a great extent have distinctive functions and a lot of them are mandated by international obligations," Dr Manning said.

"We have had a preliminary look, and we don't see any particular advantages, or major savings, to a merger. We're both small bodies with very low overheads."

It emerged last month that the Government was proposing to merge a number of bodies, including the commission, the Equality Authority and the office of the Data Protection Commissioner, into a single agency. The groups are being consulted on the proposal and have been given until next month to respond.

Fine Gael justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan said the party would be very concerned at any attempt to "amalgamate or water down" the commission, whose establishment was required under the Belfast Agreement. "That to my mind would be disturbing," he said.

"Earlier this year Fine Gael looked very seriously at a range of 500 quangos or authorities and we proposed change on the basis of many of them being duplication or wasteful.

"We deliberately didn't propose any change in the Equality Authority or the Data Protection Commissioner on the basis that these bodies are important for modern, western democracies, and it's important that there would be a certain independence of these bodies from Government," he said.

Asked whether the need for such bodies had declined in recent years, Mr Flanagan said: "I don't accept that work in the area of human rights or equality has by and large been achieved. It's ongoing, and there always will be an ongoing programme of work."

However, Mary Cleary, the founder of the support group Amen, said the importance of some equality groups may have reduced, adding: "It's mostly human rights for women we're talking about here anyway."

"I would imagine there probably was a good reason to set up the Equality Authority when it was set up. However, maybe they have fulfilled whatever they set out to do," she said.

Ms Cleary also claimed that violence against women had become a "huge industry" that commanded funding of some €30 million a year.

"I do believe that that remit has been expanded to include anything that causes any displeasure to any woman in the country . . . It's about banging doors and throwing the odd tea cup or whatever you do. It's about a bad Monday or a bad Friday or whatever day of the week it happens to be sometimes," she continued.

"But the slamming of a door or the banging of the tea cup, I would not interpret that as domestic violence."

According to the Equality Authority's annual report for 2007, approximately 50 per cent of cases taken across all nine grounds of the Equal Status Acts last year were taken by men.