Equality Scheme

The Special EU Programmes Body is fully committed to carrying out all its functions with regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity as mandated in Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act (1998). This includes equality between people of different religious beliefs, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation; between men and women generally, between persons with a disability and persons without, between persons with dependants and persons without.

We have drawn up an Equality Scheme which sets out how we propose to fulfil our statutory obligations. A copy of our Section 75 Annual Progress Report for 2019/2020 is available here.

We are committed to applying screening methods to all new and revised policies and where necessary and appropriate, we will subject new policies to further equality impact assessments.

Our screening reports include all policies recently screened and include the decisions reached. A full listing of our most recent outcome reports will be uploaded to this section of the site, when available.

Under Section 49A of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 as amended by the Disability Discrimination (NI) Order 2006, the SEUPB is required when carrying out it's functions to have due regard to the need:

• to promote positive attitudes towards disabled people; and
• to encourage participation by disabled people in public life.

Under Section 49B of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the SEUPB is also required to submit to the Equality Commission, a Disability Action Plan showing how it proposes to fulfil these duties in relation to its functions. A Disability Action Plan has been prepared for this purpose.