Predictable rant hit an already-devastated target
So Kevin Myers is at it again, with yet another rant against 'political correctness gone mad'. He must realise by now that he has become a cliche, utterly predictable in his regular tirades.
His target in last Friday's paper was Niall Crowley of the Equality Authority, against whom Mr Myers has had many previous swipes. Normally, it would not be worth responding, except that this time, others had already targeted the authority far more ruthlessly.
Just over a week ago, Crowley resigned from his position as chief executive of the Equality Authority.
During his 10 years there, he had developed within his staff impressive expertise in challenging discrimination and encouraging statutory compliance in workplaces and among service providers all over Ireland.
Apart from supporting individual claimants, under his leadership the authority also generated research on tackling discrimination and worked with business organisations, including IBEC, to develop best practice among companies.
While Crowley was in charge, the authority had gained an international reputation for its commitment to implementing the employment equality and equal status legislation.
By contrast with the bankers who resigned so belatedly this week for professional misbehaviour, Niall Crowley resigned for entirely principled reasons -- because the Department of Justice had cut the authority's budget by a staggering 43pc, making his work impossible. This figure was extraordinary, dramatically higher than any of the reductions imposed on other Justice-funded agencies. It is particularly extraordinary given that just before his resignation, Crowley had offered cuts of 33pc.
Not only that, but the authority had also been singled out for decentralisation.
Despite the abandonment of the programme for other State departments and agencies, authority staff members are still being moved to unsuitable and inaccessible offices outside Roscrea.
No explanation has been offered by the Department of Justice for its particularly hostile approach to the authority. But any objective assessment would have to conclude that it was targeted for being too successful in fulfilling its statutory role -- and because its work had begun to annoy senior department officials.
It may seem a bizarre theory -- but consider the statistics.
In 2007, claimants were successful in 83pc of those cases backed by the authority before the Equality Tribunal; a higher success rate than claimants alleging discrimination generally.
In the same year, nearly half of the authority's employment equality case files, and 69pc of its files under the equal status law, involved allegations of discrimination against the State or public bodies.
Some of the high-profile cases supported by the authority against the State would certainly have angered many at the top in government departments.
At one point, the authority even contacted the gardai about an alleged breach of equality law by Sean Aylward, then head of the prison service and now secretary general of the Department of Justice.
Then in September 2007, an entirely new set of board members was appointed to the authority, headed by Angela Kerins (also chair of the National Disability Authority and chief executive of Rehab). For the first time, board members were paid a stipend; and their membership increased as the authority's staff numbers reduced.
Once this complete change in board personnel had taken place (no member of the previous board was reappointed), the writing was on the wall. Indeed, the board's official response to Crowley's resignation was very restrained -- hardly the expression of outrage one might expect from any genuinely committed board of an agency that has just seen its budget halved, its staff scattered and its chief executive forced out.
Conor Cruise O'Brien's famous GUBU phrase ('grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented') was much recalled in his obituaries last week.
That phrase might well be applied to the sequence of events leading to the deliberate silencing by the State of a statutory body working to challenge discrimination in the public and private sectors.
Even before the Budget, it was widely reported that the authority was to be abolished, in what I described in this paper as a quiet coup. Subsequent events have borne out this description.
Whatever rabid delusions Kevin Myers might be harbouring, the shafting of the Equality Authority is not about the ideological persuasions of Niall Crowley.
The critical issue at stake is the Government's attitude to the equality legislation itself. There will be real consequences for real people experiencing discrimination if the law becomes ineffective because no agency is committed to securing its implementation.
Indeed, there will be negative legal consequences for Ireland if EU equality directives are not being adequately implemented.
Yet despite this, the Government seems hell-bent on destroying an independent and effective equality agency. The Justice Minister has tried to explain his treatment of the authority by reference to the current unstable financial climate.
But when the context is examined more closely, this looks less like a justified government cutback -- and more like a very unjust GUBU coup.
Ivana Bacik is an independent senator, a barrister and Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College Dublin
