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Hunger Strikers Memorial Breaks Equality Rules
The equality commission says Omagh District Council has breached its own equality regulations when it erected a monument to the hunger strikers, consisting of a graveyard, a tree for each hunger striker and an Irish tricolour, in the grounds of the Old Dromore Church.
The commission said that by failing to conduct a screening exercise or an equality impact assessment in relation to policies that resulted in the memorial remaining on its property for the last 4 years. To add insult to injury, the memorial was erected on land that used to belong to the Church of Ireland and the council has voted to transfer ownership of the land to the "Dromore Memorial Committee," an organisation dedicated to the glorification of republican terrorists.
The Equality Commission have told them they should now take action to have the memorial removed from council property.
Follow up:
The move on the part of the Equality Commission follows a complaint from a Dromore resident in which concerns were also raised over council plans to transfer the land to the Dromore Memorial Committee and the council has belatedly accepted that this transfer should be subject to an equality impact assessment.
"The political nature of the memorial, and its high level of visibility on a site that is synonymous with Dromore, may have the effect of marking the village out as being nationalist or republican, and may not be conducive to good relations, and therefore the matter did have sufficient equality implications to be fully considered by way of an equality impact assessment.
The purpose of the equality schemes, which all public bodies are required to adopt, is to ensure that the equality implications of any policy are fully considered.
In investigating this complaint, the Commission has concluded that allowing the memorial in Dromore to remain on council property for a number of years and subsequently proposing to dispose of the land to the memorial committee, had very clear equality implications as well as implications for good relations in the local community.
Omagh District Council should now take action and have this memorial removed from land that belongs to them."
Chief Commissioner Bob Collins, Equality Commission
And these are the same councillors who are going to be sitting on our "Super Councils." The Assembly must prevent any serious power being given to these bigots.