Nine Named Grounds on Which Discriminations is Prohibited in Ireland - Essay Example

As per the ‘Age and Opportunity’ portal of Marino Institute of Education, Ireland (n.d.), discrimination in Ireland is prohibited on the basis of nine grounds, namely, age, gender, marital status, family status, disability, race, sexual orientation, religious belief and membership of the travelling community. Various steps like the employment equality act 1998; equal status act 2000; equality authority which was set up in 1999 etc have been acquainted for this purpose. As per the ‘Analysis of the QNHS Equality Module’ by Russell, Quinn, O’Riain and McGinnity (2008), it was with the vision of eradicating any kind of discrimination in the society, the legislations on prohibition of discrimination particularly named the nine grounds on which discrimination is prohibited.

Russell, et al (2008) describe in their document that discrimination occurs in situations like when a person is denied a service, a job opportunity, or treated differently at work. In other words, discrimination means treating people differently or in a negative sense because they are, for instance, Asian, Muslim, over 50 years of age, a single parent, and/or homosexual. By checking discrimination on age, people of various age groups enjoy various rights regarding education, employment and so on.

Generally, this represents people in employment between the ages of 18 and people in vocational training between the ages of 15 and 65. The Employment Equality Act of 1998 was an important advancement in this perspective. Age discrimination in employment sector was a potential issue in Irish society over the last few decades. Hence, the government has taken a series of initiatives in order to eradicate the age based disparities in the country. No person should be ill-treated because they are a woman, man or transsexual.

This comes very much relevant in the case of women because they have been regarded as a suppressed group from long back in many societies of the world, though, the situation is hardly prevalent in advanced societies like that of European countries at present. The Irish government has amended its laws to distinguish between direct and indirect gender discrimination. The prohibition of gender based discrimination has encouraged Irish women to come to the mainstream of the society. Since the Irish employers believed that married women had not been so productive due to their family obligations, they must be replaced by single women or male employees.

Once the employers were thus unwilling to provide employment to married women the situation led to disparities in income distribution as well. Therefore, discrimination on grounds of marital status is prohibited which means a person must not be treated differently whether he is single, married, separated, divorced or widowed. The Business Access to State Information and Services portal describes the ground named family status as follows: - “having responsibility either as a parent or as a person in loco parentis for someone below 18 years of age, or as a parent or resident primary caretaker for someone 18 years or over with a disability who requires a high degree of support and attention” (BASIS).

  The term disabled indicates people with physical, intellectual, psychological or cerebral or emotional disabilities and various other medical conditions. These are the people who need special care from their fellow beings and their needs should be properly addressed. Like any other