Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I am very pleased to be in the Seanad this morning to discuss on Second Stage the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights Bill 2001. As Senators may be aware, the proposals in the Bill arise from the Government's commitment in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to bring forward measures to strengthen and underpin the constitutional protection of human rights in the State. The question of incorporating the convention into domestic law has had to be further examined in that context. Before I elaborate on the Bill's detail, I would like to deal generally with its wider background and outline some of the complex legal and policy issues which had to be considered and resolved in drafting it.

The Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was adopted by the Council of Europe in Rome and signed by the then Minister for External Affairs on 4 November 1950. Its provisions were formally ratified by Ireland on 25 February 1953 and the convention entered into force on 3 September that year. At that time Ireland also accepted the articles in the convention which permitted the right of individual petition to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg by citizens and states against states involving alleged breaches of the convention. States generally were very slow to take up this option. At the time the convention came into force, Ireland and Sweden were the only contracting states permitting such petitions.