Ivana Bacik (Independent)

On behalf of the Labour Party group, I am delighted, Dr. Robinson, to welcome you very warmly back to the Seanad after some years. After hearing Senator O'Brien describe his intermediate certificate year in 1990, we all feel like elders in this House.

I am so glad you are here today. Your career has been a credit to Ireland. You have represented us so well on the international stage and you have been a powerful advocate for human rights - not just at home, but abroad as well - throughout your very distinguished career.

Like Senator O'Brien, I feel the Leader has said all I wanted to say in paying tribute to your long and distinguished career, both here in Ireland and overseas. However, I should say a personal word of thanks to you, because I am the only person here to whom you were not only a lecturer in Trinity College, but also a client of yours as a barrister in a relatively profile case in the late 1980s involving the provision of information on abortion when I was a student leader. Just as Senator O'Brien's parents have a view on your career, my mother is eternally grateful to you for keeping me out of jail, as she saw it at the time. She and my grandmother were very enthusiastic footsoldiers for you during the presidential election campaign in 1990 as a direct result of the work you did in representing us in court.

That work was one of the many ways in which you were prepared to take on issues that were not always popular and issues that often brought a great deal of hostility down upon you at the time, but issues on which you were subsequently vindicated. Such issues include contraceptive rights and freedom of expression on information on abortion. Those are issues which we should continue to work on in the Seanad.

I would like to comment briefly on the transformative role you played in the presidency and in the Seanad, before returning to the issue of what we can do in the Seanad to further your work. You truly transformed the presidency on taking office in 1990 and made it a revitalised office. It is fair to say that tradition was continued by your successor, Mary McAleese, and I am sure it will be continued by President Michael D. Higgins. With characteristic modesty, you have not spoken about many of the other aspects of work which you have done since leaving the presidency not only as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, but also as honorary president of Oxfam International, as well as work with the Realizing Rights initiative and the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice. I should also mention, as a Trinity College Senator, your work as Chancellor of the University of Dublin, for which we are very grateful.

During your career in the Seanad, you also took on quite a range of different issues, and you only touched on a few of those. Your work made a significant contribution in bringing about subsequent change. Examples include the rights of women to sit on juries, the requirement that all women resign from the Civil Service on marriage, gay rights and changes in the law on homosexuality, work on penal reform and work on heritage and on preserving Wood Quay.

The work you are doing now with the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice is extremely exciting and it touches on perhaps the most pressing issue facing us today, although it is hard to look beyond the crisis in eurozone countries. Clearly, climate change is a genuinely international threat to us all. The principles of climate justice, which your organisation has adopted and which inform all the activities in which you are engaged, are extremely exciting and extremely important, particularly the need to link human rights with climate justice. Too often they are seen as two separate things, environmental rights and human rights. As you say, the international rights framework must encompass the right to climate justice. I am also glad to see that you have encompassed issues of gender in your work on climate justice. Climate change impacts differently upon women and men. This is a very exciting project and I am sure I am not alone in hoping it will not be your last project. We will endeavour to promote the principles on which you are working in this term in the Seanad.

I would like to finish by speaking again about the Seanad. Senator O'Brien asked how the Seanad can be used in the best way to be representative of people and to express the sort of democracy and participation that you spoke of in your address to us. How best can we make the Seanad a meaningful and useful forum? We are trying to do that, as the Leader has said, in what may be the last Seanad, but what we hope will be the best and most effective Seanad. The fact that you are here addressing us, the fact that Dr. Manning has already been here and the fact that we have a range of groups addressing us in the Chamber this afternoon as part of our public consultation process, are all important reforms to make the Seanad more engaged with the public, more meaningful and to give us more of a role in changing public policy.

I think there are other areas where the Seanad could again take a leading role on issues such as climate justice and women's rights. There are still challenging issues that may be better addressed in the Seanad, given our traditional role as a forum for such issues. I speak, in particular, about women's reproductive rights, the right to abortion and issues to do with the ABC judgment of the European Court of Human Rights last December and the Government's commitment to establish an expert group. These are issues we need to discuss in the House.

Dr. Robinson mentioned the strong women's representation in the House. Some 50% of the members of the Labour Party group are women - six out of 12 - about which we are delighted. However, it is also important that we consider the rights of those in minorities generally, including people with disabilities. In this term we are focusing on the rights of older people, but we will be focusing, I hope, on other aspects of human rights in the future.

It is important that we continue to table legislation that would not perhaps get the same hearing in the Dáil, that touches on issues of direct relevance to people and on which the law is still out of date. I am talking, for example, about changing the law to ensure religions will not have an unduly dominant status, in view of the fact that when it comes to religion persons who describe themselves as having no faith now make up the largest minority group in this country - Catholics make up the largest religious grouping. We need to consider all of these issues, even if they are challenging or controversial. This would be in keeping with the tradition of which Dr. Robinson is the best exemplar in the Seanad but which is and was espoused by others such as Senator Norris and former Senator Mary Henry who took on challenging issues, brought forward matters of social policy and directly helped to bring about social change. With all of this, we salute Dr. Robinson and look forward to her responses to the questions we all have about how we can best use the Seanad.