Ms Pia Janning:

Absolutely. If we come back to the particular case in South Africa that Mr. O'Gorman mentioned about the dialysis treatment, it concerned a man who could not get access to dialysis treatment because there was a scarcity of resources and at the time, the hospital had in place guidelines stating who would and would not qualify for dialysis treatment. This particular man did not qualify and without that dialysis treatment, he ultimately would die. However, the court held that the guidelines that had been put in place were reasonable because the state was under such pressure in terms of resources. Moreover, were those kinds of guidelines to be changed to apply to this particular man and to others in his position, it would then require a huge increase in the health budget, which simply was not reasonable. The judgment was that this decision had been made in good faith and as no more resources were available, there was nothing the court could do. However, were these rights to be included in the Constitution in the first instance, as Mr. O'Gorman has stated, on the macro level there would be better decision-making that was evidence-based and which had in place indicators, benchmarks and timeframes, as well as engagement by civil society and an understanding on its part as to what the Government was doing and why it was doing it. Second, on an individual level, there of course could be cases in which an individual might end up going to the courts if he or she thought his or her particular right had been violated. This has been seen in respect of primary school education in Ireland previously and the concept is not completely foreign in Ireland, as it has happened in the context of primary school education.