An engineer whose experience ranges from the construction industry in Ireland and Mozambique, to director of the Pavee Point Centre for Travellers in Dublin, and negotiating a place for the voluntary and community sector in Partnership 2000, Niall Crowley is a man of many parts. His appointment as chief executive designate of the Equality Authority came as a surprise, as he does not have any legal or civil service experience. It also gives a clue to the future strategy envisaged for the authority, that it will act as a facilitator and promoter of equality rather than an enforcer.
However, it will have an enforcement role in referring cases to the office of the Director of Equality Investigations, who has still to be appointed and will report directly to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
Niall Crowley comes from a privileged background. He went to Gonzaga College, Dublin, and then Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied civil engineering. It was during his last year at Trinity, in 1979, that he became a co-worker with Dublin's Simon Community. Like many co-workers he found Simon "a challenging experience" that helped form a lot of his views.
After Trinity he joined Ove Arup, the design engineers. His first job was an extension to the Pavilion Bar at TCD. After four years he volunteered for overseas development work. He was employed by the Mozambique state construction company in the development of an economic and social infrastructure, that had been ravaged by years of war.
Looking back on the Mozambique experience, he says: "It was a way of ensuring my engineering skills were put to positive outcomes. It was there I developed my interest in social change and community work." He saw community work as a potentially very effective way of pursuing social goals that are normally the prerogative of political movements.
On returning to the Republic he became heavily involved in the Dublin Travellers Education and Development Group. The group has played a major role in mainstreaming Travellers' issues. Currently co-director with Ms Ronnie Fay, Mr Crowley helped to develop it from a small training project to a national resource centre for Travellers. Now known as Pavee Point, the organisation has not only helped them acquire new educational and vocational skills, but contributed to the emergence of what Mr Crowley calls "an inter-cultural approach to policy development".
Mr Crowley also became involved in the Community Workers Co-Op. It was a network for community activists and he quickly emerged as one of the main strategists for ensuring that the interests of the socially marginalised found their way onto the agenda, when issues like European Structural Funds and the non-pay aspects of national agreements were being discussed.
This, in turn, led to involvement in the National Economic and Social Forum and in the emergence of a Community Platform that ensured that a wide range of community sector organisations gained direct access to negotiations on Partnership 2000. He subsequently played an important role in monitoring the agreement, especially in working groups on mainstreaming equality, poverty-proofing and the social economy commitments.
He says he will miss involvement in the community sector. "But then change can be positive, both in terms of people moving on and of leaving space for other people to fill." He sees the goals he will be pursuing as similar to those he has pursued in the past. "I will just be pursuing those goals from a different perspective and with a different set of tools."
The immediate priorities will be organisational. The new Equality Authority will have three times the staff and four times the budget of the Employment Equality Agency it replaces. Mr Crowley sees that as an indication of the Government's commitment to the equality agenda.
He is anxious that the composition of the staff should be as diverse as the population it hopes to serve. Its immediate priority will be "asserting its role and powers in people's consciousness". He wants it to be a body to which women, people with disabilities, refugees, Travellers and others encountering discrimination will turn to with confidence, and which will also be seen as a resource by the wider community.
A major difference between the authority and the EEA is that its remit will be much wider. "It will cover nine grounds of discrimination rather than the previous two," he says. "It will address discrimination both in employment and in service provision.
"The authority will also have new powers to conduct equality reviews and audits. This wide-ranging agenda can now be built on what has been achieved to date by the EEA, which will be incorporated into the authority.
"The first priority will be to develop a strategic plan that gives coherence to this wide agenda. This plan must be one that all interests can buy into and support." For an equality agenda to work, he argues that people must have a sense of ownership in the plan. Therefore the process by which it is agreed will be of vital importance. He says the authority will have to "develop documents that a lot of interests can buy into" and points out that he has developed a lot of experience in "developing agendas across different interests.
"The challenge is developing consensus across the social partners and finding ways of posing issues that have a common meaning and a common context. The context of Partnership 2000 suggests there is the potential for that to happen. Equality is quite high up a lot of people's agendas, farmers, employers, unions and political parties."
He sees Partnership 2000 as the first national agreement that allowed for a full dialogue across all sectors of the community. This has created a wider understanding of social inclusion and equality issues.
"At the same time there can be bottom-line interests that prevent movement," he says, and some aspects of the agreement, such as poverty-proofing Government initiatives to ensure they lessen rather than aggravate social imbalance, can be difficult.
The development of social partnership has been hampered by the gap between policy aspirations and outcomes. Mr Crowley believes that the new role being given the NESF on policy implementation will help produce "a more focused policy agenda". He says that achieving equality goals is "not just about enforcement, but how you implement policies. "There has to be balance between legal forms, a promotional focus and an information focus."
He is optimistic that both the equality Acts will be in force by the end of the year. The introduction of codes of practice to cope with the changed legislative framework will be a major task. They are not enforceable in the courts but they can be used in evidence.
The authority will also be able to carry out equality reviews and audits to examine current practices to see how they can be improved. Once again, Mr Crowley emphasises the "supportive and collaborative" strategy the authority will pursue, although he accepts there will be cases where legal enforcement will be necessary.
Where enforcement is necessary he believes it should be done in a way that reinforces and validates the overall process.
"It isn't about handing down solutions, but addressing problems and finding useful solutions."
He points out that some issues are not susceptible to simple solutions. Job segregation in the labour market often makes it hard to deal with equal pay issues.
"Even more challenging is the exploration of difference in time use between men and women, and this might promote more flexible work practices reconciling work and home life."
Some groups within our society, such as refugees or gays, are often invisible and some elements within these minorities prefer to remain that way. Mr Crowley says that dialogue in dealing with these groups becomes even more important if everyone's interests are to be taken into account.
He is optimistic that the tightening labour market will make it easier to secure implementation of the employment equality legislation.
It will encourage employers to take on people who previously encountered obstacles and also put in workplace strategies to ensure employees stay.
Finally he warns that progress will bring its own problems and challenges, if only because it will "involve real change in the situation of the groups protected by the legislation.
"This will create a different context and we need to have flexibility to respond to the potential in a new context and the challenges it might pose."
