Ms Doireann Ansbro:

I will respond to two of the Deputy's questions on proportionality and protest. I completely agree with what the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has said. We agree that the courts are the ultimate arbiter for a proportionality assessment however I will share some observations we have made in recent months on the obligation on the Government to do that proportionality assessment. On whether the measures were necessary and proportionate, that will require a much deeper review in time.

There have been different responses and different regulations, and they have addressed different issues. We have expressed concerns at each stage on different elements of those. The first regulations impacted very significantly on the rights of people, in particular in their movement. The regulations at that time required people not to leave their homes without a reasonable excuse or not to go beyond 2 km from their home. They were introduced as guidelines and An Garda Síochána began an operation assisting with the enforcement of those guidelines, without criminal sanctions. The Garda Commissioner reported at the time widespread compliance with those guidelines without those criminal sanctions. Once those guidelines were put into law in the first set of regulations and underpinned by criminal sanctions of up to six months in prison and a €2,500 fine, which was allowed for in the primary legislation, we expressed the view that they were potentially disproportionate and unnecessary and that, therefore, there was a risk that they did not meet those human rights tests of necessity and proportionality.

In terms of the restrictions on events, nobody would disagree that restrictions were necessary given the human transmission of the disease. We did not express a very clear view whether they were necessary and proportionate. It is likely that they were. Our concerns around those regulations tended to be about communication in terms of what exactly was allowed and when, what the end date of each regulation was, when were they renewed, and what was allowed inside and outside. There was a lack of clarity, and when there is that lack of clarity, it raises issues about necessity, again because we do not know if what is precisely being provided for in law is responding to what is actually happening on the ground.

In terms of some recent proposals, in particular whether there was going to be criminal sanctions attached to gatherings in homes, we expressed a view that that would be disproportionate, particularly because we had not seen the evidence linking a rise in cases to house parties. We know that there were some cases linked to gatherings, but a gathering in a home could just be the gathering of a family of seven who live together. We considered that to be very questionable in terms of meeting that requirement of necessity.

On a final point on proportionality, to prove that laws are necessary, and when we have seen that guidelines can be followed without the criminal sanctions before regulations are introduced, it needs to be proven that education, consent and compliance are not working. When the communication and compliance and not working we have proper communication and education, that is probably when we need to be bringing in regulations with laws and criminal sanctions.

The ICCL has done a lot of work around the right to protest in Ireland. We have had many protestors come to us over recent months asking for advice on what has and has not been legal. We have directed them to the regulations and have done our best. We cannot offer actual legal advice because we do not have practising lawyers on our team, but we do our best to point them to where the law is. It has been difficult at times. The right to protest, as I said in our opening statement, takes on a fundamental importance during a time when so many decisions are being made affecting people's lives in so many different ways. We believe that there was a real need for clarity around what is allowed and what is not. There was a real opportunity for the Government to issue guidelines or to include within the regulations themselves what is allowed and what is not. Whether it is about limiting the size of protests, requiring masks during protests, or requiring social distancing, we think there is definitely potential to have much greater clarity around protests.