Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

The UN Human Rights Committee will focus primarily on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights because that is its mandate. If it were to stray all over the place with other treaties, it would go beyond its remit. Using the covenant as a filter allows it to engage with any number of issues. I understand that the Aarhus Convention deals with the environment, which has an obvious impact on civil and political rights. To that extent, the committee would be extremely interested in environmental issues. Other examples were given and the same would apply to them.

The protection of civil and political rights provides a very broad canvas on which to review any number of issues that apply in Ireland, even where they formally exist as separate commitments under separate treaties. Senators will recall that one of the first speakers this morning spoke of how the socio-economic situation can have an impact on the enjoyment of civil and political rights. Through that prism, even issues concerning people’s socio-economic status are of interest to the committee.

Direct provision was considered in some detail this morning. It raises so many human rights issues that I suspect it will be a prominent element of the dialogue in Geneva with the human rights committee. It is a very disturbing practice, which is particularly bad in the context of developed states. There are not many European states that operate a system as dehumanising as direct provision. I expect that it will receive attention from the committee and attract critical commentary, not least because this is not the first time that the UN human rights committee has criticised the direct provision system in Ireland.

In response to the question as to what is the distinct parliamentary voice, I can only venture some thoughts. Parliament will have to decide what its voice should be but it seems to me that Parliament does not have to defend the institutions of Government with the same vigour as Government does. It is entirely natural and appropriate for Government to support its institutions and to present them in the best possible light. That is not Parliament’s business. Parliament has the space to be a more critical friend of the institutions of State.

Parliament is perhaps very well placed to examine the underlying and structural issues that impede human rights protection. That is why the status of the Irish Human Rights Commission seems very pertinent and meet to the business of Parliament, not least given the formal nexus the UN believes there should be between a human rights commission and a nation’s parliament. That was adopted in the Belgrade declaration last year.

A parliamentary intervention might want to consider the protection of political space because if political space is not protected, many of the key human rights covered in the covenant are not guaranteed. It is of interest to Parliament to examine the extent to which it is possible for any citizen to put him or herself forward for election and serve in Parliament in an effective fashion. That links very closely with general issues of the protection of the freedom of expression, which some of us consider as almost the primordial human right. Without expression, we have so little. The Oireachtas might wish to examine that, considering that UN bodies have criticised Ireland for an excessively enthusiastic constitutional provision on blasphemy.

The complexity of Ireland’s engagement with the EU and its European commitments will not be the primary focus of attention of the UN Human Rights Committee’s proceedings because Ireland is the state party under review, not Europe. The committee would go beyond its remit if it moved beyond the shores of Ireland. There will be no discussion of any country except Ireland in the six-hour review.

Where the issues of Ireland, Europe and human rights become terribly important and, much more broadly, the role Ireland can and must play as a champion of human rights within the European Union, are beyond the narrow remit of the review in July. I will shamelessly draw attention again to the Galway Platform on Human Rights in Irish Foreign Policy which speaks at length on how Ireland in its foreign policy must not only honour its own human rights commitments, but also those which have been taken on board by Europe, and notes that Ireland has great potential to play a role as a human rights champion within the European community.