Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

They would, but they could start proceedings with their lawyers querying the meaning of the phrase "in good faith" and suggesting that it must be based on some rational appreciation of the circumstances and be reasonable in some way. If they then said they had a reasonableness test, the case could be dragged out. In very many cases of judicial review which I have seen, efforts are made to bring matters which are, to use Senator Mansergh's term, for resolution on the political plane, onto a legal plane. If anyone has any illusions about this, a series of actions was commenced with a view to toppling the institutions in Northern Ireland by people who claimed that the British Government was acting in a way that did not conform with their desires. It is not at all fanciful to envisage that litigation would be thrown at the Independent Monitoring Commission to either embarrass it or prevent it from acting or reporting, or requiring it to report in a particular way or to invalidate its reports in some sense. In those circumstances Senator Mansergh is correct. This is an international body which operates on a diplomatic and political level and not within the purview of domestic litigation. If it falls into that latter category, all its activities will, going by past experience, be dogged by litigation, and this will embarrass rather than enhance the peace process.