Ms Deirdre Duffy:

With respect to Ireland and the UN system in general, the committee will be aware that Ireland has ratified six of the core UN treaties and the first universal periodic review by the UN Human Rights Council was conducted in 2011. Similar to all treaty body monitoring, the ICCPR is a cyclical process whereby the ongoing obligations of states under the treaty are examined on a periodic basis. As the committee will already have heard today, in particular from Professor O'Flaherty, Ireland signs up to these international obligations, agrees to be bound and periodically it submits reports and enters into dialogue with the committee in question. It then receives a series of recommendations on the gaps that exist in meeting its obligations under that particular treaty.

Civil society also has an important role to play in this regard in giving information to the State, in giving information to the committee and in engaging rights holders in this process. That description is the process in its simplest form. It is a cycle of human rights reporting and monitoring and no one piece will ever reach its full potential without the other components living up to theirs. Ireland's engagement with international human rights reporting is broadly positive. We had an excellent experience of the first UPR examination in 2011. However, there is one key aspect where we fall short time and again. The weak cog in the machine, as we see it, is the implementation of recommendations. In Ireland, this circle is rarely completed. We see this in the repetition of recommendations made by the UN Human Rights Committee and other UN committees over the years.

On foot of Ireland's success in being elected to the UN Human Rights Council in 2012, the ICCL developed the legacy project to highlight the systemic impediments to the full implementation of UN committee recommendations and international human rights standards in Ireland. We believe that implementation of UN recommendations at home is key to a country's capacity to promote and protect human rights abroad. The legacy project is tracking the process of seven key impact areas throughout the term of Ireland's membership of the council. These are issues which civil society groups and other human rights advocates have been progressing for many years. In our opinion, it is a serious concern that the recommendations of UN committees and the UN Council - this opinion is shared at international level - often have not given rise to any change whatsoever in law, practice or policy or appear to remain permanently immovable. For example, members will have heard reference today to the recognition of Traveller ethnicity. There are numerous recommendations over the years from UN bodies on this issue.

The rationale behind the legacy project is to track the progress of these specific issues which have already been spotlighted by the UN system to assist us in answering the following question. If the UN reporting mechanisms have highlighted these areas where change is needed to protection human rights in Ireland, why has this not happened? For example, Ireland signed, but has not yet ratified, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - the committee heard from the Rehab Group - and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, otherwise known OPCAT. Reference to OPCAT is all the more poignant given that last week saw the publication of the McMorrow report into the tragic death of Gary Douch in Mountjoy Jail and the attending failures on behalf of the State in this respect.

To explain briefly, OPCAT requires the establishment of a national preventative mechanism, NPM, which through its consistent inspection regime works to ensure places of detention meet international human rights standards and, therefore, deaths such as Gary's and other similar incidents could be prevented. Despite signalling its commitment to OPCAT and receiving numerous recommendations from UN bodies to move to ratification, the Government maintains that an NPM which meets the requirement of the treaty must be established before we can ratify. However, the situation we are in now is that there is no public information available as to the steps being undertaken by Ireland to progress the development of this mechanism. We know the draft places of detention Bill is languishing in the lower end of the legislative priorities and little else in regard to the Government's priorities on this issue. This leaves us in a highly unsatisfactory situation where ratification is not forthcoming due to a lack of domestic legislation and, as far as we are aware, there is no impetus to prioritise this legislation to comply with these international human rights standards.

Turning to consider how this system can be improved, unless systemic change occurs to institutional domestic structures, it is very difficult to envisage how international human rights standards will be fully implemented in Ireland. As such, the treaty monitoring cycle under ICCPR, which is the subject of today's discussion, will never really be completed. However, the ICCL believes that implementation could be significantly progressed by the establishment of an institutional oversight mechanism. We have in mind something akin to a multi-stakeholder platform which could monitor the realisation of treaty body and UPR recommendations at domestic level.

I refer to examples in other countries which have various mechanisms. Members will be aware of the joint committee on human rights in England and Wales. In France, a body which monitors French compliance with international recommendations from the UN sits within the office of the prime minister.

As part of the legacy project, the ICCL is in the process of developing further research on the use of these oversight bodies. What is clear from our initial soundings is that each country needs to devise its own mechanism suited to its particular legal and democratic structure. I referred to the ratification of OPCAT, Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. Ireland received a series of recommendations on this issue as part of its UPR examination. Ireland led the way internationally in its engagement in the UPR and this engagement was highly regarded. However, back in Ireland where the rights-holders are waiting for protection, to assist this process an interdepartmental working group was established to oversee Ireland's UPR reporting process. This initiative was broadly welcomed by civil society, including the ICCL. However, we have little or no information regarding the process of the implementation of UPR recommendations. No information is forthcoming from this group and we are not aware of the work being carried out.

If we mean to take human rights seriously, implementation of treaty body recommendations must be our goal. We believe that a multi-stakeholder implementation platform consisting of senior representatives from key operational Departments, civil society groups, the national human rights institution, perhaps Oireachtas Members and other relevant stakeholders could track and monitor the progress of these issues highlighted by the treaty monitoring bodies. We envisage a structure such as this would be best placed in the Office of the Taoiseach. Such a mechanism should be conducted in a transparent fashion.

We foresee the Oireachtas as an additional layer of accountability which would serve to copper-fasten the process. The implementation platform could be required to report annually to a relevant Oireachtas committee. This creature could take a form suitable to our own political and democratic systems but in order to move beyond the current lacuna, we need to think of an effective mechanism to make these recommendations count; otherwise, there is no point. Whatever form that takes - the discussion should be carried out in an inclusive fashion - the structure should be transparent, participatory and accountable to an external body. At the moment we do not know how these recommendations are being progressed. The legacy project will produce further materials on the concept of this implementation platform. We would wish to incorporate the views of public representatives on the concept.

I wish to briefly address an additional matter which was not included in our previous submissions or in the Government's response to the list of issues. The campaign group, Survivors of Symphysiotomy has recently joined the ICCPR steering group and we are happy to be working with the group to highlight its issues before the UN Human Rights Committee. The group's call to the committee will centre in the main around the lack of remedy in Ireland for the wrongs suffered by women who had symphysiotomies carried out on them in Irish hospitals, potentially breaching their rights to be free from inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment and their right to privacy. We have copies of the SOS submission to the human rights committee with us should Senators wish to have additional information. We are happy to answer any questions from Senators.