Rónán Mullen (Independent)

Ba bhreá liom fáilte ó chroí a chur roimh ár n-aoi speisialta. Tá céad fáilte romhat, a Mhuiris. Tréaslaím leat agus leis an gcoimisiún as ucht na héachtanna uilig atá ar siúl agaibh.

I welcome Dr. Manning, formerly Senator Manning. Perhaps it is a case of once a Senator, always a Senator. Speaking for Senator Quinn and myself, I should welcome him not just as a former Member of the House but also as the chancellor of the National University of Ireland, NUI. I thank him for his comments about Seanad Éireann. If this House can demonstrate half the capacity for survival that the NUI has shown, it will be doing well.

Dr. Manning made many important points. What resonated were those in which he stressed the need for human rights to be an inclusive rather than exclusive concept. I was particularly glad that he reminded us that human beings are born free and equal in dignity. He also correctly called Members of the Houses to a deeper engagement with the commission in the pursuit of excellence in the protection of human rights across the board in our society.

He will probably not disagree that when it comes to the identification or discernment of the requirements of human rights and their vindication, it is not a one-way street. As elected representatives of the people we will sometimes have things to say to Dr. Manning and the commission that might be challenging and might invite him to further reflection about the directions we must take as a society on particular issues. In suggesting that the learning is a two-way street, I am hopeful for a synergy and positive co-operation even when, at times, there will be deep differences of opinion about issues of profound importance. We have heard excellent contributions today from people whose values and fundamental conception of human rights differ, and sometimes in ways that are truly life and death. I hope we can have that dialogue and that Members of the Oireachtas will take seriously the need to be reflective legislators at all times, particularly where fundamental human rights are concerned.

Dr. Manning correctly pointed to the sources of our knowledge and our human rights law as our Constitution, various international agreements and, indeed, jurisprudence both in this country and abroad. However, that is not to say there are not other issues. We must identify and protect human rights in a way that is harmonious, that is, one person's rights must always be vindicated in a way that is harmonious with another person's enjoyment of their rights. We can think of issues in health care where that would be a particularly important concept. Sometimes, too, we will have to consider where legitimate issues of welfare end and human rights become identifiable. There are goods that we seek to identify, promote and protect in our society which might not be categorisable as human rights but which are goods nonetheless and which we would all agree we should pursue. Some of those goods are indeed human rights; they are identifiable across time and space as being always applicable, regardless of the society in which one lives.

However, we must be honest as well and agree that the content of human rights is not always unproblematic. I was delighted that Dr. Manning mentioned that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity. When we think about that and ask why human beings are born free and equal in dignity we have already heard the answer. It is a natural content, as it were, in that by virtue of our humanity certain rights inhere in us. If certain rights inhere in us by virtue of our humanity, we cannot honestly say that those human rights appear at birth only and do not exist prior to birth as well. That is why there are two issues on which I want to address Dr. Manning briefly in the time remaining to me, the protection of life and education. In fact, these are two of the three issues that Dr. Manning mentioned at the outset.

I would ask Muiris to do what he can to promote what I would call an authentic human rights perspective on the issue of protection of life before birth. That is important, both in terms of his commission's work in Ireland but also in terms of the vision of human rights that we Irish promote on the international stage. When we redefine protection of human life so as to promote, or even to permit, practices that exclude some of humanity, we do not merely do an injustice to those individuals, we damage the concept of human rights and damage the retention of human rights in international mindsets for the longer term. That is where Ireland has so much to contribute by promoting the integrity of human rights. Integrity of human rights is not merely something that the dominant people in the dominant part of the world identify as being desirable in this time and place. Instead, we must always feel called to a deeper identification of truth that is at the heart of human rights.

I note that there are various international agencies and bodies which have sought to criticise Ireland's particular laws around the protection of the unborn. Often they fail to identify certain key facts. They fail, for example, to identify that Ireland has consistently the lowest maternal mortality in the world. They also fail to identify that we are good in this country at identifying the need to protect best medical care for women in pregnancy because our doctors are skilled at seeing that there are two patients whose human rights and dignity must be vindicated.

I suggest to Dr. Manning that we in Ireland need to identify education according to particular values of faith or philosophy as being a right to be enjoyed by families for their children as taxpayers in harmony and in concert with the right of people who want a different kind of education. We also need to identify the right to have that education provided for as well, and the State will have a particular role in that regard. If I were to utter a small word of criticism, I would say that in the Irish Human Rights Commission's document there was insufficient definition of terms such as "indoctrination" and "proselytism". On the concept of bringing children through an education system in a way that is harmonious with the religious values of parents who are also taxpayers, we would need to be careful not to denigrate that as indoctrination and proselytism, but rather to recognise that an authentic human rights approach to education is one that will recognise plurality based on parental choice, and with considerable and substantial State support to ensure different choices in our society are respected.

Tréaslaím leis an tUasal Manning arís agus guím gach rath ar a chuid oibre.