Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The RCSI is an independent organisation and an internationally renowned medical school attracting international students from more than 60 countries. It has a student population of 4,000 people and employs more than 850 people globally, 80% of whom are graduates. I am responsible to the House for the response of the Irish Government to the situation in Bahrain. My concerns, the concerns of the Government and the concerns of the Irish people in respect of the human rights situation in Bahrain and the arrest, trial and imprisonment of the medics have been conveyed in clear terms through our ambassador in Riyadh and to the Bahraini Embassy and its ambassador in London.

We have also been pressing Bahrain in multilateral forums to undertake human rights reform. At the most recent session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, we raised our concerns about the grave allegations of mistreatment, amounting to torture, of detainees that were documented in the report of the Bahrain independent commission of inquiry and we urged Bahrain to take further steps to implement in full the recommendations of the report of the Bahrain independent commission of inquiry.

At the previous session of the Human Rights Council in June, Ireland made a joint statement with 26 other countries urging Bahrain to enhance its co-operation with the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the special procedures of the Human Rights Council. At Bahrain's universal periodic review in May, Ireland recommended that all decisions by the national security courts should be subject to review in ordinary courts and that laws should be enacted to prohibit civilians being tried in military courts.

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