The Act incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into law will come into force on December 31st, the Minister for Justice announced at a conference on new human rights legislation over the weekend.
Mr McDowell acknowledged the Bill allowing for this incorporation, which itself was part of the Belfast Agreement signed in 1998, completed its second stage in the Dáil in June 2001, but did not finally make its way through the Oireachtas until June this year.
He defended the Irish model of incorporation against its critics. "I believe that what we have achieved in the Act is full-blooded, thorough-going and workable in terms of court procedures and comprehensive to the fullest extent permissible under the Constitution," he said.
The Chief Justice, Mr Justice Keane, said that given the extensive overlap between the protection given to fundamental rights and freedoms in the Irish Constitution and that given by the Convention, the issues presented by the judiciary might be "less daunting" than anticipated.
He said there were two areas where the rights in the convention were more elaborated than in the Constitution, the right to freedom of expression and to education.
Ms Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, of the Ontario Court of Appeal, said it was important to distinguish between civil liberties and human rights.
"Civil liberties are about treating everyone the same; human rights is about acknowledging people's difference so they can be treated as equals," she said. "Civil liberties are only about the individual; human rights is about how individuals are treated because they are members of a group."
Historically, the right of every individual to be free from government intervention took root in the US and became its most significant international export.
"It was an atomised and atomising political philosophy and it venerated the individual over the group," she said.
This changed after the second World War, when people were jolted by the horrifying spectacle of group destruction, which gave rise to the concept of human rights.
"We saw how the neutral purpose of civil libertarian individual rights had unequal impact on the opportunities of many individuals and eventually we saw that all the goodwill in the world could not protect us from our own prejudices and stereotypes, or from restrictively designing systems and institutions accordingly," she said.
In recent years, Ms Justice Abella went on, Canadian judges had been criticised for the judicial enforcement of rights based on the Canadian Rights Charter of 1982.
"As those who are disadvantaged came more and more to rely on an independent judiciary for the enforcement of their rights, those whose traditions or entitlements are at risk from these claims flailed rhetorically at the judicial enforcers."
Judges were criticised for being "politicised" or "activist", she said, when they were engaged in their role of interpreting and reviewing the rules to which society proclaimed itself subject.
"While both courts and legislatures are entitled to enforce rights, only the courts have the institutional characteristic that best offers the possibility of responsiveness to minority concerns in the face of majoritarian pressures - namely, independence.
"Only courts have the independence from electoral judgment to risk controversy in enforcing rights," she said.