Country report non-discrimination : transposition and implementation at national level of Council Directives 2000/43 and 2000/78 : Ireland [2023]

Irish society is quite homogeneous. According to the 2016 census, of a population of just under 4.8 million, 78.3 % are Roman Catholic, 9.8 % are non-religious (an increase of 73.6 % from 2011), and the remainder are of various other religions. 82.2 % of the population describe themselves as 'White Irish' and 0.7 % as Irish Travellers. 57 850 people identify as 'Black African' or 'Black Irish', with 9.5 % belonging to 'Any other White background'. 643 131 people, approximately 13.5 % of the population, recorded having a disability. A total of 6 034 same-sex couples live in Ireland. Non-Irish nationals number 535 475 (11.6 % of the population), with UK citizens and nationals of EU countries (Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian and Latvian) comprising the top five nationality groups. Ireland's anti-discrimination laws were expanded significantly in the late 1990s. The Employment Equality Act 1998 and the Equal Status Act 2000 provided for nine discriminatory grounds and established a national equality body, as well as a dedicated forum for hearing anti-discrimination complaints, the Equality Tribunal. From 2008 successive national budgets severely curtailed funding for equality infrastructure. In November 2014, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) was established as Ireland's national equality body. The body is equipped with equivalent powers to its predecessor, and its funding position has improved. The Equality Tribunal was subsumed, along with several employment rights bodies, into the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) in 2015. There were no major developments in case law in 2022. The Labour Court found that an employer's liability for third-party harassment should be assessed with reference to what is reasonable in each context (Chapter 12.2). In October, the High Court upheld a retirement age of 70 set out in legislation (summarised in Chapter 12.2). Two codes of practice concerning EEA, which were drafted by IHREC, came into effect having received ministerial approval (Chapter 7.6(d)). The equality body published a review of legislation that transferred jurisdiction from the dedicated forum for anti-discrimination complaints to the ordinary courts in cases involving licensed premises. It called on the Government to reform the law, enabling complaints to be determined by the WRC (Chapter 6.1(b)). International human rights bodies reiterated concerns about inequalities in the field of Traveller accommodation (Chapter 3.2.9).