Dr. Des Hogan:

In 2007, the Irish Human Rights Commission convened a meeting with other statutory bodies and NGOs. GSOC, for example, attended the meeting. At the time we were looking at the fact that Ireland was soon to ratify the optional protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture and all Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. That has not happened and there has been a very worrying lag. In fact, with hindsight, if we had the independent mechanism, some of the issues that arise today might have come up in independent reports. The whole idea of the optional protocol and the UN disability convention is to bring in third dimension protection where one has national bodies that do what the UN Committee for the Prevention of Torture, CPT, or the international bodies do routinely. One has a national body that is designated in statute to go into any place of detention in the State. One is talking about Garda stations, prisons, psychiatric institutions and in some cases nursing homes when de facto detention happens. We could also be talking about airports and parts of airports where the possibility of de facto detention might occur.

That is what the mechanism is. It is either a single body, which is the model in some states, or it is a number of bodies that are designated to carry out the function itself. There are advantages for single bodies over multiples ones. For example, in the United Kingdom there are multiple bodies but then one does not have a lot of coming together of the different bodies because of mandates overlapping and people not wanting to step on others’ toes and the duplication of issues.

The requirement is not as clear as the disability convention but there are also moves to say that the body that is set up must be independent as well. For example, internationally, we would have a situation in Europe where a lot of national human rights institutions are designated as the national preventative mechanism. A lot of them are ombudsman-type bodies which already go into prisons and such places so they already have those powers. We in the commission have said we would be very reluctant to take on that role unless we were given adequate resources because the last thing one wants to do is not to be able to discharge the very important mission properly because one is trying to do that and other things as well.

As Mr. Kelly has said, it is probably another element missing from the current picture when we are looking at the Garda Síochána Act. One could ask whether it is something that needs to happen anyway. If one has the GSOC body which is receiving complaints, adjudicating and acting on them, this is the other part where a body does on-the-spot inspections and looks at the systems and practices underlying that.

The opposite is the case in the prison system. We have an Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention but we do not have a prison ombudsman. The Mental Health Commission has different roles as well. That is the idea. It is a case of the CPT doing spot checks but the visits are made by the national body so one does not have to go to the international body with complaints.