On the 18th of October 1999 the long awaited new Employment Equality legislation came into force. Replacing the Employment Equality Act 1977 and the Equal Pay Act 1974, this new legislation outlaws discrimination on the nine grounds of gender, marital status, family status, age, disability, religion, race, sexual orientation and membership of the travelling community. The Irish Council Civil Liberties (ICCL) organised a conference to coincide with enforcement of the new legislation. This conference brought together individuals and representative organisations that were interested in or had been involved in the debates which challenged and informed the development of the legislation. The plenary sessions described the Irish equality situation and set it in the wider European context. A particularly interesting presentation on the development of the equality provisions of the Northern Ireland Act was given by Inez McCormack.
Most importantly, however, each of the nine grounds were discussed and debated in detail at the workshops. Each workshop took the format of a number of presentations on the given ground, e.g. Gender Ground, followed by general discussion of the issues. Each of the workshops provided fuel for lively debate. A number of general issues emerged. First the strength of each of the grounds as a protection was particularly debated and it was generally agreed that testing through challenges and taking cases will be extremely important to an understanding of what difference the legislation will make in real terms. Second the urgent need for the forthcoming Equal Status legislation became increasingly apparent given the limits of the current legislation to employment and also due to the exemptions and exceptions that were built-in during its enactment. Finally the complexity of the task of reducing disadvantage and discrimination was clearly evident in the course of the discussions.
Many of the conference participants were particularly interested and involved with one or other of the nine grounds covered by the legislation but had limited knowledge of the other issues. The workshops in particular provided an invaluable opportunity for dialogue and interaction between participants. While exploring the specificity of issues relating to each ground the workshops also provided an opportunity to explore the ways in which issues overlapped.