Seanad debates
Wednesday, 18 June 2003
European Convention on Human Rights Bill 2001: Second Stage.
This compares dramatically with other jurisdictions where the figure in some cases runs to hundreds of occasions and in countries which would regard themselves as bastions of human rights protection to many tens of cases. Four of the cases might be broadly described as involving sexual and family law themes, the fifth concerned access to the courts and the absence of civil legal aid, another dealt with a planning matter, three centred on one point arising from the provisions of section 52 of the Offences Against the State Act 1939, remarkably as one eminent commentator stated, because they represent the only pressure placed on our criminal legal system by the overspill of 30 years of civil conflict in Northern Ireland. The most recent case concerned a troubled adolescent and the lack of proper facilities. That is a pen picture of the occasions on which we have been brought to book in Strasbourg.
No comments