Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on his new job. Perhaps we will get on better than we expect. Once again we are having an inconsequential debate on Ireland's flouting of international human rights law. Each year, the same points are put forward and each year the Government ignores the arguments and extends these pieces of legislation which have been repeatedly criticised by a range of human rights bodies. The continued existence of the Special Criminal Court and its expanded remit to include organised crime is an affront to the principles of universal human rights.

In 2014, the UN Human Rights Committee, in its concluding observations on Ireland under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stated:

The Committee reiterates its concern at the lack of a definition of terrorism under domestic legislation and the continuing operation of the Special Criminal Court. It expresses further concern at the expansion of the remit of the Court to include organized crime

The State party should introduce a definition of "terrorist acts" in its domestic legislation, limited to offences which can justifiably be equated with terrorism and its serious consequences. It should also consider abolishing the Special Criminal Court.

The court has jurisdiction over scheduled and non-scheduled offences, meaning people can be arrested and charged with any crime and the DPP can decide to send them to a non-jury trial with no explanation as to why. The people can then be tried and convicted by judges who are not answerable to anyone. There are ways around jury intimidation. Closed circuit television can be used or a jury can be made anonymous. Instead we have a blanket ban on juries in these situations. In the UK there have been only two juryless trials in the past 400 years, where the possibility of jury tampering was empirically proven first. We should be exploring these avenues if we are genuinely interested in the principles of justice.

The Government has repeatedly defended the existence of the court, citing the threat of international terrorism and the ongoing gangland violence we have seen in the city. These arguments sidestep the central issue. The search for justice and the desire to keep the peace in our society is not served well by a justice system that does not operate in a just manner. The Government would do well to try to address the sources of these criminal activities rather than continuing to apply these flawed pieces of legislation that are a perversion of justice and incompatible with international human rights law.

In the case of gangland activity, there is no police force or government on the planet which can claim or demonstrate that prohibition of drugs is a solution to the problems and crime surrounding drugs or the problems of the drugs themselves. Thankfully, there are many examples from all over the world of how relaxing drug laws brings positive outcomes for everyone involved. Such examples show how lending a helping hand to those who find themselves trapped in a cycle of drug use instead of criminalising them for needing a substance to lean on can help them lead stable lives and save communities and families much pain and sorrow. For decades, European countries such as Portugal and Switzerland have been showing us how progressive drug policy works.

With regard to concerns about the threat of international terrorism, the Government would do well to wake up and realise the biggest threat to Ireland in this regard is the long-standing use of Shannon as a forward military base by the US military to carry out its now 16 year long wars of aggression, which have decimated predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and beyond. We knew the threat of terrorism in the west would increase with the onset of these wars. The Chilcot report laid bare the fact that before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, led by the US and UK, Tony Blair was forcefully and repeatedly warned by Britain's intelligence services that it would lead to exactly the type of terrorist attacks that happened in Manchester and London recently. He concealed these warnings from the British people, instead claiming the war would reduce the risk of terrorism. If the Government was really concerned about such attacks happening in Ireland, we would end our collusion with US imperialism and terrorism and engage in a genuine policy of neutrality.

The reality is these laws pose a greater danger to the systems that are supposedly intended to protect than the threats rattled out by the Government to justify the existence of the laws. To quote Professor Dermot Walsh:

There are too many contemporary and historical examples from around the world of States in which political/economic elites have used the cover of emergency or special measures to suppress the growth of opposition and of alternative views. For me, that is the greatest danger posed by such measures. Unless confined to very specific, objectively defined targets, they have a tendency to be used by the State, and by powerful forces or interests within the State, to pursue ulterior agendas. Under the guise of combating terrorism, they can end up causing more lasting damage to basic democratic values and the rule of law than the terrorists could ever hope to have achieved.

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