Delay in human rights law a matter of `regret'

It was a matter of "frustration" and "regret" that the implementation of key European human rights legislation was taking so long, the Supreme Court judge Ms Justice Catherine McGuinness said yesterday.

"One has to regret that legislation has not been brought forward yet on this important and fundamental issue," she said.

She was speaking at the publication of Cross Currents, a series of short books of essays by leading intellectuals on issues pertinent to the jurisdictions on both sides of the Border.

Although Judge McGuinness would not be pressed on her views on the fact that the Government has not yet given effect to the European Convention on Human Rights, three years after it gave a commitment to do so in the Good Friday agreement, she said: "You'd wonder what they are at".

The three books, which feature two essays each on multiculturalism, economics and human rights, are published under the auspices of the Centre for Cross Border Studies. Mr Andy Pollak, director of the centre, is the series editor.

The European Convention on Human Rights Bill, which was published in April, is now awaiting its second reading.

Among those writers mentioned by Ms Justice McGuinness, who contributed to the Cross Currents series, was Mr Declan Kiberd, Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature at University College Dublin, who wrote on multiculturalism in Ireland.

In his essay, Strangers In Their Own Country: Multiculturalism in Ireland, he asks whether a newly prosperous and confident Republic is embracing multiculturalism.

"The evil of racism," he writes, "is a subset of an even wider problem: the collapse of faith for res publica, the loss of faith in society as such.

"Such a faith can only be restored if leaders outline a philosophy and not just programmes of economic self-interest. For the ultimate paradox is this: that only people secure in their national philosophy are capable of dealing confidently with those who come among them with deep commitments to alternative codes."

In a society where there was a spread of apathy, fewer people voting and an increasing belief that dishonesty is considered acceptable and even clever, it was important for people such as Prof Kiberd to say this, Judge McGuinness said.

In Can the Celtic Tiger Cross the Irish Border?, Prof John Bradley, of the ESRI, and a unionist politician and economist, Mr Esmond Birnie, debate the extent to which Northern Ireland can learn and benefit from the experience of the '`Celtic Tiger". They also examine whether it makes sense for the island to trade as one unit.

The essays on human rights, by Mr Stephen Livingstone, director of the Centre for International and Comparative Human Rights Law at Queen's University Belfast, and Prof Ivana Bacik, Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College Dublin, are published in Towards a Culture of Human Rights in Ire- land.

The Cross Currents series is published by Cork University Press. Each book costs £6.95