Mr. Donncha O'Connell:

Interest was expressed both by Departments and non-governmental organisations in this area. Under the Constitution, international obligations or international instruments do not form part of domestic law unless it is determined by the Oireachtas that they do but there are many ways of implementing international obligations into domestic law. This project will not result in a report but a discussion document to be descriptive in the sense that it will outline the different ways of implementing, incorporating or transposing international obligations, including those that might be taken on by the EU and, therefore, have consequential implementation questions for Ireland.

We would like it to provide an inventory of the different methods of implementation or transposition available to the Oireachtas. We would like it to be evaluative in the sense that it will evaluate the different models and methodologies of implementing international law domestically and, perhaps more importantly for a forum like this, we would like it to be useful so that this kind of discussion document can present to Members of Parliament the variety of ways of doing that. It will not advocate a position. It will not be about trying to displace domestic law or arguing that domestic law is in some sense inferior to international law. In fact, it is far more about constructively getting our domestic system of municipal law as provided for in the Constitution to dialogue more effectively with the international obligations the State takes on in the exercise of its sovereignty.