Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

The sanctions are essentially diplomatic measures. No country wants to be embarrassed on an international platform, and the UN is getting very good at embarrassing countries which are egregious in non-compliance. The issue will arise in forum after forum. This is the review of the UN Human Rights Committee but there is also a review of a committee against torture and on the rights of the child, and it will repeatedly return to the same problems in a manner that most governments find, at best, embarrassing. Egregious non-compliance would also be subject to review in a political body of the United Nations, the Human Rights Council, which also examines the Irish record on a periodic basis. For example, other parts of the UN that would be very interested in issues of serious non-compliance would be the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who would make these issues her talking points on visiting Dublin. There are also experts overseeing thematic issues of human rights in the UN - the so-called special rapporteurs - which deal with freedom of expression, adequate housing and extreme poverty. There is no formal policing power but there is a capacity to embarrass, which democratic states like ours take seriously.