It’s quite clear that the DUP is failing to live up to it’s commitments under equality law with respect to the changes under the Review of Public Administration (RPA). Recently the Equality Commission had to step in and correct the actions of Lisburn City Council when it breached it’s own equality scheme and excluded the SDLP from the transition committee; which also breached official Department of Environment guidelines citing proportionality.
The Equality Commission told Lisburn Council that they are in breach of equality law and their own equality scheme after the DUP and UUP colluded and excluded the SDLP.
The DUP, with Minister Poots and MP Jeffery Donaldson in the chamber, argued this week that the necessary legislation would be through in January resolving the issue, and there was therefore no need to follow the equality commissions ruling.
This argument was proved to be false, as the legislation dealing with transition committees is held up with everything else in the Executive, which isn’t really dealing with very much to be honest.
So the DUP, not content to abide by the Equality Commissions ruling proposed that Lisburn Council use an informal system to nominate members to the committee. The UUP, bar one member, supported this. This is a system that can well be used with a Unionist majority to exclude any party.
The Minister has serious questions to answer around this; how can minorities be assured that they will be protected in the new councils if the Minister is over seeing a carve up in Lisburn? What confidence will minorities on other councils have? Why are the DUP not content to share power proportionally? And why is the Minister not abiding by his own Departments guidelines on this set by his predecessor?
I strongly suspect that the Equality Commission will be back to Lisburn when the Unionist parties attempt once again to exclude minorities, and they wonder why others think it’s important to have built in protections!
