Waterways Ireland Context

About Waterways

Waterways Ireland was established in 1999 as one of six North/South Implementation Bodies established under the British Irish Agreement. Its responsibilities include "the management, maintenance, development and restoration of inland navigable waterways principally for recreational purposes" ([1]), both north and south of the Irish border.

In 2005, as part of their ‘Equality Quality Assessment' (EQA), known also in UK government as Section 75, Waterways Ireland wished to establish a process of policy-making and screening in order to evaluate and ensure equality in all its policy operations:

"As a new organisation, developing new policies, Waterways Ireland's approach has been to seek to mainstream consideration of equality in policy development. To do this we are implementing an Internal Screening Process to identify and where possible remove any adverse equality impacts from new policies whilst these are being developed." ([2])

To learn more about Section 75 issues, such as those affecting public bodies like Waterways Ireland, visit the following web sites:

• Equality Commission, a body of legal representatives who produce guidelines to the UK government on managing equality issues.
• Northern Ireland Office's Equality Unit, established to provide advice and guidance to departmental staff on equality and to take forward and monitor the implementation of the Equality Scheme.

Why E-Consultation?

In conjunction with the E-Consultation Research Project, Waterways Ireland decided to embark on an e-consultation process as part of their first Section 75 consultation on this issue.

One of the key reasons for adopting this approach was a hope that such a strategy would be more inclusive in terms of engaging the general public, as well as its usual clients.

Previously, Waterways Ireland conducted more traditional consultations, primarily through focus groups and public meetings. This e-consultation would be run in tandem with a traditional ‘consultation document’ process (i.e. paper-based consultation) and ‘face-to-face’ meetings.

Groups Promoting Equality

Waterways Ireland identified ten different groups [3], which it would target for consultation. Consultation would seek to identify the equality between each of the groups:

1. People of different gender.
2. People of different ages.
3. People of different religious belief.
4. People of different race, colour, nationality and ethnic origin.
5. People of different marital status.
6. People of different sexual orientation.
7. People with and without disabilities.
8. People with and without dependants.
9. People of different political opinion.
10. People who are members of the travelling community and people who are not.

Waterways' E-Consultation Aims

The stated aims of the e-consultation were to gain views on [4]:

• The The Internal Screening Process developed and implemented by Waterways Ireland to ensure new policies are equality proofed as they are developed.
• Policies developed and internally screened to date.
• The policies Waterways Ireland proposed are subject to an Policies for the Equality Impact Assessment in the future.
• Timetable for proposed Policies for the Equality Impact Assessments.