Press Statement

Preasráiteas

04 July 2019

18% of persons aged 18 or over experienced discrimination

Go to release: Equality and Discrimination 2019

The Central Statistics Office has today (4 July 2019) published the results of the Equality and Discrimination Survey carried out in Quarter 1 2019.

Commenting on the report, Maureen Delamere, Statistician said: “Almost a fifth (18%) of persons aged 18 years or over, stated that they had experienced discrimination within the previous two years. Those who experienced most discrimination were persons who identify as LGBTI+ (33.2%), persons from non-white ethnic backgrounds (33.1%), unemployed (30.2%) and non-Irish persons (26.7%).

Almost one in ten (9.4%) experienced work-related discrimination (either in the workplace or while looking for work), while 11.8% cited discrimination when accessing services. The latter includes discrimination experienced in places such as shops, pubs, restaurants and other retail outlets, or in banks and other financial institutions. Also included is discrimination experienced when looking for housing or accommodation, or in accessing education, health, transport or other public services, or discrimination experienced from An Garda Síochána.

The most common grounds identified by people who had experienced any form of discrimination were age (34.1%), followed by race/skin colour/ethnic group/nationality (21.9%).

Of those who had experienced discrimination of any type, 9.1% cited sexual orientation as a reason for this discrimination.

Nearly one third (32.3%) of persons aged 18 or over who had experienced discrimination in the previous two years indicated that they had a good understanding of their rights under Irish equality legislation, while almost one in eight (11.5%) stated that they had no understanding of their rights.

Of those who had experienced discrimination in the two years prior to interview, seven out of every ten (70.4%) took no action in response to their experience".

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