David Norris (Independent)

Senator Bacik has anticipated much of what I was going to say and she has done so very effectively. I spoke at considerable length on this subject on Second Stage, as the Minister may or may not recall. I am very worried by this because it seems all of a piece with the Government's attitude towards human rights. As someone who has been in the House for a long time and has worked on the board of a number of the organisations that have protested about this, it appears that it is a specific policy intention of the Government to cripple the advancement of human rights. Every single time it comes up, there is an attempt to limit, to obfuscate or to remove funding. Here, organisations that work for the advancement of human rights are being defined out of an opportunity to gain charitable funds.

The Law Society is a serious professional body. If it takes the trouble to communicate to Members of the House that this is a serious gap, the Minister of State is obliged to listen. This is a very different matter from fiddling around with collection boxes on O'Connell Street, which the Minister put forward as a major advance this morning. The Government will not get away with that little bit of persiflage. The Law Society, as Senator Bacik indicated, already raised this matter as long ago as 2002 in a report entitled Charity Law: The Case for Reform, in which it endorsed a definition put forward by the Charities Definitional Inquiry in Australia, which it said was an appropriate thing to include. The Minister of State has excised the human rights provisions from this Bill.

The society makes a series of other points. The definition is not recognised. It provides scope for the recognition of the promotion and protection of human rights as being beneficial to the community at large. Is it not? Is the Government prepared to be quite so cavalier about the issue of human rights that it does not regard it as beneficial? Does it regard it as beneficial? If so, what is the difficulty with including it in this legislation?

The definition has potential to prevent the development of new charities. The Minister of State has said that some of the old ones might squeak through but that is hardly a very enlightened view and it certainly places any new ones in a very serious and difficult position. It could have a detrimental effect on the charitable status of existing charities. Section 40 provides that:

A charitable organisation in respect of which-

(a) there was immediately before the commencement of section 39 an entitlement to exemption under section 207 or section 208 of the Taxes Consolidation Act [and]

(b) the Revenue Commissioners had issued a number ... for the purposes of such exemption,

shall, subject to section 44, be deemed to be registered in the [Register of Charities] for so long only as there continues to be an entitlement to such exemption.

A registered charitable organisation is now being defined to be an organisation that is actually registered in the register or that by virtue of section 40, is deemed to be entered in the register. However, "charitable organisation" is expressly defined in the Bill and is stated not to include an excluded body. That is fairly obvious. How could it include an excluded body? Excluded body in turn is defined to mean among other things a body that promotes a political cause unless the promotion of the cause relates directly to the advancement of the charitable purposes of the body. The consequences of these provisions is that notwithstanding the deemed registration of an existing charity engaged in human rights activity, the organisation might at some future time be held to be an excluded body and, by definition therefore, not a charitable organisation.

The human rights committee goes on to say it is aware that the current proposed definition uses the word "includes" rather than "means" and that this leaves open the possibility that the promotion and protection of human rights could be held to be of benefit to the community at a later date, which is an argument the Minister of State made. However, the promotion and protection of human rights is included in the statutory definitions of charitable purposes in many other jurisdictions, including England and Wales, Scotland and Australia.

It did not at that point mention that it is also included in Northern Ireland. The exact wording in the Northern Ireland legislation is, "a purpose that falls within this subsection if it falls within any of the following description of purposes ... the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation or the promotion of religious or racial harmony or equality and diversity". There is the exact parallel in the Northern part of this island over which this Government until recently claimed jurisdiction and it is apparently its ambition to reunite the island. It is not doing a very good job of it if it is turning its face against respect for human rights in this part of the island at a time when in the Northern part of the island, they are clearly doing so.

This is the most serious matter in the entire Bill. It is unlikely to be greatly covered in the media, thanks to the triumph of Senator Hannigan here today——