Professor Siobhán Mullally:

I thank the Chair. On the point about directive principles the commission is concerned that this would not allow for a strict enough or positive enough obligation on the State to support carers' roles and their work because of the way the directive principles have been interpreted, which is in our view too limiting.

With regard to Article 41 and the definition and construction of the family, and the specific role given to the marital family, our longer policy document which was published in June 2018 and which I hope is available to everyone cites Mr. Justice Hogan in the RX case in 2010 in the High Court, who was of the view that the Constitution, and specifically Article 41, was not closed off from providing protection under certain circumstances to other close relatives outside of the specific scope of marriage. In our policy document and elsewhere we have cited Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the interpretation given there to family life. We presume that in the Constitution there is compliance with international law unless a clear indication is given otherwise.

There is the further question of the whole allocation of resources, socioeconomic rights and separation of powers, which has come up a number of times. We note that the vindication and protection of civil and political rights is a highly complex matter. Some examples include the right to a fair trial, access to the courts and administration of justice. There are differing views on the scope and limits of those rights, and it requires huge allocation of resources on the part of the State to vindicate the right to a fair trial, for example. The allocation of resources and decisions around that is essentially connected to the protection of any right, whether it is categorised in a traditional way as civil and political or as economic and social.

As already mentioned the right to an education is explicitly recognised in the Constitution but our courts have also recognised other socio-economic rights. The right to seek employment, for example, was recently recognised for asylum seekers by the Supreme Court in the NHV case, in which the commission was an amicus curiae, and in which the Supreme Court cited a general comment of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was a first in the Irish courts. Economic, social and cultural rights were recognised there as being of progressive implementation but nonetheless positive obligations are imposed on the State. That is the context in which our policy document was published.