Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail)

The membership of the commission in charge of the declaration was broadly representative of the global community and included Eleanor Roosevelt as chairperson. It was a great honour for the wife of an American President to be chairperson of the organisation. We were not members of the UN at the time but adopted the charter and we have ratified the six core UN human rights treaties, as well as a wide range of other international human rights instruments.

The broad principles of the declaration are almost universally accepted, and although it is a fundamental document of the United Nations and forms part of customary international law, a human rights declaration can be truly effective only if it can be enforced by an international court. For this reason, on International Human Rights Day, I draw the attention of the House to the matter and ask the Leader to discuss last year's report of the human rights committee of the Council of Europe, of which I am a member.

The report called for the accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights and was overwhelmingly endorsed by the parliamentary assembly. The Lisbon treaty would allow and require the EU institutions to sign up to the convention, which would mean the institutions of the EU, as well as member states, would be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, the only international court which directly enforces a human rights document.

I call on the Leader to give this very early consideration as it is an important issue. It is only by taking further steps like this to consolidate the international community's commitment to human rights conventions and declarations that the principles set out in the universal declaration will be universally enforced.

Today is very special and we in this country have a great record on human rights. We cannot always be proud of some actions taken——