Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response and, of course, I agree with much of what he has said about the need for such special rapporteurs to receive adequate funding and the importance of their role. I question whether they can be as independent as he says when it is a matter of public record, for example, that the Open Society Foundation donated $137,000 to Amnesty International to fund a pro-abortion campaign. Should we not be concerned when organisations that campaign on such issues are making huge payments to supposedly independent special rapporteurs at the UN level.

The Minister of State agrees that if he left office or the Dáil in the morning, as a matter of law now there would need to be a decontamination period before he could take up advocacy in the private sector. In a very similar way we could argue that, as occurred in the case of Professor Ní Aoláin, there should be no question of a person being concurrently a chairperson and, I presume, in the pay of an Open Society Foundation project while also supposedly acting as an independent UN special rapporteur. There is an apparent conflict of interest and the Minister of State's response to me, with all due respect to the Government, does not address it.

I am interested in finding out whether the Government knows about the ECLJ report and if there is anything in the report that worries the Government. Does the Government propose to look at it now in light of what I have brought up? Is the Government consulted when it comes to the appointment of special rapporteurs from this country? In principle, we should be very proud of that. The question is, if there is an apparent conflict of interest, whether the Government will express a view.