the basis of sexual orientation is outlawed by the Employment Equality Act, 1998 () and the Equal Status Act, 2000 (). These laws forbid discrimination in any of the following areas: employment, vocational training, advertising, collective agreements, the provision of goods and services, and other publicly available opportunities. Additionally, while gender identity is not explicitly included in these two acts, it has been interpreted as being covered under the category of sex and disability. Some protections provided remain uneven. As pointed out at page 26 in "Review, the Journal of the Public Service Executive Union, July/August 2014", Section 81E (5) of the Pensions Act 1990 prevents pensioners who retired more than one year before the 2010 civil partnership law from challenging the refusal of a survivor's pension for their civil partner. Despite the passage of the Marriage Equality Amendment, the Labour Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin, told the Dáil that he will not allow, for example, a gay man, who opted not to give a (meaningless) pension benefit to his wife in 1984, the right to opt to give a pension benefit to his husband in 2015 the first opportunity he could have done so. This would remain the case even if the gay man paid the same pension contributions as his heterosexual colleague. This decision was condemned in a leading article and opinion piece in the Irish Examiner on 24 June 2015 as being contrary to the spirit of the Marriage Referendum but remains government policy. The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989 () outlaws incitement to hatred based on sexual orientation. The penalties for violating this law are a fine not exceeding £1,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or both on the first offense, or on conviction on indictment, a fine not exceeding £10,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years or both. The Act defines the term "hatred" as follows: In October 2022, the Irish Cabinet in government formally signed off on protecting transgender individuals from hate crimes within Ireland - by explicitly including "gender identity" to the list which sexual orientation is already explicitly included since 1989. On 3 June 2015, the Government Cabinet debated an amendment to the Employment Equality Act, 1998. The amendment would remove the provision in the Act allowing religious-run schools to dismiss teachers and staff on the sole basis of their