Ms Yvonne O'Sullivan:

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett for his questions and comments. With regard to his question on the culling of payments and entitlements, in the social welfare area FLAC works mainly on appeals on a strategic case base. Therefore, at that stage we do not necessarily see a huge number of cases where the opinions of doctors and other practitioners are not taken on board . However, we have heard of this happening quite often. Sometimes such cases are concerned with the revision of a decision or sometimes it is a case of a person just being annoyed. We suggest that better first instance decisions would reduce this and would probably also reduce costs in the social welfare appeals office. We carried out a survey on social welfare appeals among practitioners which indicates there is a huge inconsistency in decision making within the social welfare appeals office. It is quite difficult to know what exactly is happening in some cases or to establish a trend. For that reason, we call for a more widespread publication of social welfare decisions to make the system more transparent.

With regard to economic, social and cultural rights and whether they should be included in legislation so as to have a legal footing, we believe there is more than one way of ensuring these rights are realised. We believe more practical steps should be taken, such as the inclusion of civil society in policymaking and budgetary decisions.

Ms Woods mentioned the example of the inclusion of the Scottish version of the Human Rights Commission in that country, contributing to mapping the pathway between evidence policy and spending. Other examples from Scotland include improving the presentation of equality and human rights information, and improved commitment to and awareness of mainstreaming of equality and human rights into policy and budgeting processes. There are other mechanisms if we want to go down the legal route. South Africa would be an example of how we go about ensuring the right to housing as a legal obligation of the State. There could be financial and legal repercussions for the State. A government does not necessarily want to go to court all the time over the right to housing because it is something to which it has legally committed itself. In a way, it pushes a government to realise these rights. We see it as a practical measure along the lines of economic, social and cultural rights, although a legal footing would also be welcomed because legal rights are just as important as civil and political rights.