Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am speaking in support of the motion and I commend Deputy Maureen O'Suilivan and the other Members who proposed it for using their Private Members' time to facilitate a debate on this important issue. Since I only have five minutes - and given that others have covered the detail so admirably - I will stick to discussing the broader issue.

We need to ask more from our budgets than merely balancing the books. Instead, we must ask if each budgetary proposal or measure - regardless of whether it relates to spending allocations or cuts, tax increases or reductions - vindicates or violates the fundamental human rights of our citizens. For example, we should ask whether a proposal to remove medical cards is consistent with the human right to health, whether a proposal to reduce local authority budgets result in contravention of the human right to housing and whether a decision to increase third level fees interfere with the human right to education. We should also ask whether the decision not to restore the respite care grant - despite having fiscal room for manoeuvre - respects the human right to an adequate standard of living or whether it fails this test. If the answers to such questions reveal that human rights impacts are negative and that citizens rights are being violated, then the reality is that the decisions to which they relate will end up costing us - taxpayers and the State - more in fiscal, social and human terms.

In so far as they provide a way to identify and reduce associated externalities, applying human rights standards to budgetary decisions makes economic sense. This all the more true in times of recession, when there is less to go around. However, this human rights-based approach to budgeting is the very antithesis of the austerity model favoured by the establishment parties. That surely explains the Government's decision to amend rather than support the motion. Both the Government's amendment and its members' explanatory remarks have failed to address what I believe to be the core question. Will the Government commit to introduce formal, statutory mechanisms for consistently evaluating the foreseeable human rights impact of all budgetary proposals before committing to them? Will it also put in place effective monitoring to consistently scrutinise the human rights outcomes and impacts of budgetary decisions once they have been made and implemented? The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, has been consistently evasive when I have asked him this directly, specifically in respect of equality budgeting. He will not say "No" but, more significantly, he will not say "Yes" either. This characteristic fudge is not good enough for a Government that includes members of the Labour Party in Cabinet and on the Economic Management Council.

My party has made a clear commitment to introduce a statutory human rights audit of all budgetary decisions. This would be both analogous and complementary to a standard value-for-money audit. If the Comptroller and Auditor General has a mandate to scrutinise public accounts for spending irregularities, surely this should and could be augmented by a statutory role for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission to scrutinise these same accounts for externalities arising from a failure to meet human rights standards.

I wish to draw the attention of the Dáil to a report recently published by Amnesty International on applying Ireland's economic, social and cultural rights obligations to budgetary policy. This report has implications for the work of all Ministers, not just those on the Economic Management Council but also the Cabinet as a whole. It has particular relevance for the work of the Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and the Committee of Public Accounts. I have requested that each of these committees consider the aspects and recommendations that are specifically relevant.

As my party and I pointed out last week in the debate on our legislation that would have introduced a constitutional right to water, no single Government's commitments on basic rights are ultimately enough. When it comes to protecting the fundamental rights of citizens, this is the main role of the State's Constitution. Ordinary legislation is not enough to protect those rights from the whims of future Governments. For more than four months, the Government has delayed in responding to the recommendation of the Constitutional Convention that the 1937 Constitution be amended to introduce enforceable guarantees of fundamental economic, social and cultural rights. We have publicly stated our support for this proposition which commanded overwhelming majority support at the convention, but the Government has refused to do the same. The people deserve to know. In particular, they deserve to know the position of the Labour Party, which has at various times as a coalition partner claimed to support a constitutional guarantee of such rights but which apparently will not now be pinned down on this issue. Once again, I call on the Government to make its response known and to set a date for the long overdue Dáil debate.

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