Letter: ​Northern Ireland needs a new combined equality and human rights commission that provides protection the minority unionist population

Furthermore, S.75 equality screening has proved an ineffectual legal instrument unable to protect minority communities.

Over the last eighteen months, I discovered that two substantive reports prepared by myself asserting marginalisation, under-representation and discrimination against NI unionist and Protestant students and academics and substantial indirect discrimination against Christian academics within the UK university sector had not been sent by the Equality Commission staff to the Commissioners.

The failure of many large organisations to fully engage with S.75 screening requirements and the failure of the ECNI to monitor S.75 equality screening obligations was most evident when QUB removed the Union Theology College from the Queen's campus and more recently when BCC failed to S.75 equality screen or take into account human rights obligations in the current proposals for new bye-laws to prevent street preaching.

In correspondence to myself, the ECNI has reported that it has to prioritise its resources and hence the ECNI staff decided it could not consider my repeated claims related to indirect discrimination of Unionists and Protestants in the NI university sector that in turn determines unionist engagement with the NI managerial, business, legal and profession sectors.

Within legal issues such as the 'Asher's case' and the Belfast City Council bye-law proposals, there are combined equality and human rights issues that demand a new combined equality and human rights Commission, one that matches the combined equality and human rights commissions in the rest of the UK.

Moreover, the provision of a new combined equality / human rights Commission should also include internal monitoring and screening mechanisms to ensure that this Commission can be held to account by public and by S.75 equality screening legislation that provides effective protection to the minority Unionist community from two Commissions that no longer have the trust of the unionist public.

Dr Edward Cooke, Mallusk