Ms Deirdre Duffy:

Very good. I will try to answer together the questions raised by both Senators. In many respects the implementation of recommendations is very difficult for the Departments here because the way the portfolios are set out, responsibilities lie in different areas. For example the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is responsible for international engagement, but implementation largely falls to Departments with greater engagement in domestic issues. Without wanting to complicate the system or create another structure, there has to be a way to get the internal structures talking to one another. That is why we suggest bringing them together in some form of platform. As we know, resources are very tight in terms of priorities - not even money but workload and official responsibility. To be fair to the officials already there, I do not believe it is a case of not walking the walk, in many respects nobody really knows who is in charge of what and it just has not been organised.

The Senator asked about this happening on an organised basis and if we were to present our argument in a nutshell, which perhaps we should have done, that is exactly what we are getting at. It just needs to be organised, but it also needs to be transparent. We need to bear in mind that we are talking about human rights. The rights holders need to sit at the centre of any human rights discussion. We need their empowerment and participation. That is why we are struggling and coming up against a system where we cannot seem to get through it. We do not know what is happening. We do not know who is moving where or how things are moving.

I take the Senator's point about possible overload in the Department of the Taoiseach. That may be seen as the Holy Grail these days whereby people feel if responsibility were moved in there, things might change. There could well be a very important role for any aspect of the Oireachtas - for the Seanad, for a committee. We are here today largely to inform the committee that our years of experience of working in this area have shown us that this is where we need to go.

This is not something that can be solved overnight. It should not be put on the long finger either because we will be in the same situation in four years unless we move it ahead. While it is not something that needs to be expedited for this particular report, it would be excellent to hear a Government representative tell the UN committee in July that this was something it was considering. That would show a major commitment on its part to implementation.

In terms of an existing institution, we have our new national human rights and equality institution coming on board. We have experts such as Professor O'Flaherty in this country. I believe we can work through this and come up with something that is suitable to everyone and achieves our aims. How we go about that needs to be very participatory, particularly in terms of the groups the committee has taken the time to listen to today. Ultimately, people such as Ms Becker and Mr. Giambrone represent the rights holders whose rights are being affected when these recommendations are not implemented.