Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

This is a very important issue. As I have noted in previous debates during the Bill's passage through this House, we have to be careful in ensuring that life is not made more difficult for existing organisations or impossible for new organisations in terms of extending their remits or operating in a practical sense on the ground.

The argument will be made that human rights are not excluded from the Bill's provisions because, for example, the welfare of a community could be defined at some stage in the future as potentially including human rights. That is not good enough because any discussion that arises in the future will be influenced by the fact that human rights were specifically excluded. This will represent a serious hindrance. If such a consideration applied in respect of an application to the Revenue Commissioners for charitable status, an organisation would immediately run into potentially disastrous difficulties. I want to be positive about the matter and I do not impute any ill-will to the Minister of State.

The obvious way out of this is to find a mechanism for inclusion of an explicit reference that the promotion and protection of civil and human rights is a charitable purpose. This must be done. Enormous work has gone into, for example, the development of the new United Nations Convention on Disability, the former thrust of which — it includes contributions from people such as Professor Ger Quinn and others — was to enable the disability issue evolve into a rights context.

The issue is whether one purports to be charitable towards an unfortunate person one manages to find a means of assisting or whether one views that person's right to participate fully as a citizen. Participation is mentioned in relation to means. However, the drift in terms of jurisprudence in this area is towards an explicit recognition of a right. This is happening nationally, in European terms and at United Nations level. An enormous amount of work has gone into this. Equally, in regard to the development theory, with which I am more familiar, the Irish White Paper to its credit makes reference to the human rights component of its development strategy. The Norwegians regarded as most important that it have a rights focus as part of its white paper on development.

As regards practise on the ground, those of us who have done so know that when one walks into an area of huge deprivation by which one is deeply saddened, one's concern is to be of assistance rather than to address the fundamental issue. Practical examples are important. During our earlier discussions on the Bill I expressed concern in regard to the exclusion of political purpose. Looked at historically, this would have excluded the campaign in the British Parliament for the abolition of trade in slaves and in today's terms would exclude the admirable work by some of our NGOs in making cases against child or bonded labour. Is such campaign political? It is, at least, human rights.

Recognition of civil and political rights was not the strongest possible position to take. The strongest possible position would have been that suggested by me during the Second Stage debate, namely, not to include an interpretation that excluded people opposing, say, a dictatorship. I admire organisations that undertake works of justice.

I have been a Member of this House for a long time and have witnessed clear division in this House between those who suggest it is all right for us to be involved in charitable acts and those who believe it is not appropriate for us to be involved in making the case for justice, an issue I came across while campaigning on issues in Central America in respect of El Salvador and Nicaragua and in regard to the Chilean dictatorship of Pinochet and so on. I regard as sad that we would ever do anything that would interfere with the capacity and charitable status of organisations engaged in tasks of justice, including the Mothers of the Disappeared in Chile and in Argentina and so forth. Even if I accepted the view that we must exclude people involved in activities that could be construed as political we would be doing something much more serious if we provided that the whole purpose of activity of an NGO or any other civil organisation can be the advancement of human rights.

I stated earlier that this is not the strongest but the minimalist campaigning position, which is precisely the reason the human rights committee of the Law Society of Ireland, which is not a radical organisation, has put forward its particular proposal in regard to management of the issue. It suggests that because the word "means" is included in the legislation the suggestion could be made that one could seek to satisfy the advancement of human rights under another condition at a later stage.

The function of parliamentarians is to deal with the quality of legislation. It is not satisfactory to state one agrees with everything said but that the matter can be dealt with another day. This could create practical difficulties for existing NGOs and others in terms of their dealings with, among others, the Revenue Commissioners and could create a boundary for new and emerging concentrations. While I am an adjunct professor of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, the views I have expressed are my own. I simply wish to declare my connection with a human rights organisation.

The unanimous scholarly view in regard to legislation of this type is that it is best to be explicit. Inclusion of protection and promotion of civil and human rights does not lessen legislation but provides for protections, accountability and transparency. One should not leave dealing with this issue to another day as this would require those performing these important and worthwhile tasks to seek to be accommodated within some other parts of the definition. I urge the Minister of State — there is no suggestion of a partisan difference between us on this — to seek to accommodate this issue on the basis of good legislation, practise and management.

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