Political parties should be pressed in the forthcoming general election as to whether they are going to take steps to strengthen constitutional protection for cultural, economic and social rights, solicitor Michael Farrell has told a seminar in Dublin.
Delivering the annual Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) Dave Ellis memorial lecture on the topic of using the law to secure social justice, Mr Farrell said the Constitutional Convention voted overwhelmingly for an amendment to strengthen the protection of economic, social and cultural rights, but the recommendation was overshadowed by the marriage equality referendum.
“The call is still awaiting a response from Government,” he said.
While Ireland has ratified a whole suite of regional and international human rights conventions, it does not give automatic legal effect to these. To do this requires legislation by the Oireachtas and the European Convention on Human Rights is among the few such conventions that have been given direct effect in this way.
The Government had pressed for that convention to become part of the law in Northern Ireland as part of the Belfast Agreement, and was then obliged to adopt similar human rights provisions in its own jurisdiction, Mr Farrell said.
However, the act that made the convention part of Irish law needs to be amended to make it more effective, he added. The amendments needed should include a timeframe within which the Government must act when it has been found that Irish law is incompatible with the convention, as well as granting the courts a greater range of remedies when they make such findings.
He said the various human rights conventions that Ireland has ratified could, if they were enforceable, address principles such as the right to food, accommodation, an adequate standard of living, social welfare, education, accessible health care, and gender and racial equality, and the most effective way to make them enforceable would be to enshrine them in the Constitution.
Mr Farrell, a former co-chair of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties who is due to retire as senior solicitor with FLAC at the end of this year, said the pledge by the Conservative Party to repeal the law which incorporated the ECHR into UK law, and to replace it with a new “British” bill of rights, was a very serious issue for Britain, Northern Ireland, and the convention itself.
Incorporation of the convention into the law of Northern Ireland was a key element of the Belfast Agreement’s human rights section and forms the basis for the code of conduct of the PSNI. Repealing the act that incorporates the convention would undermine the Agreement and arguably be in breach of the parallel international agreement between the British and Irish governments, he said.
“I would like to suggest that human rights lawyers and organisations here should join with our colleagues in Northern Ireland and in the UK as a whole to resist any move to repeal or water down the Human Rights Act and to defend the European Convention on Human Rights which represents a beacon of hope to so many people across our shared European continent.”
