The proposed Bill aimed at incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into Irish law does not make the convention part of Irish law, according to the president-designate of the Human Rights Commission. It just makes it the standard by which all administrative action is to be judged.
"This is all very well as far as it goes," Mr Justice Donal Barrington told the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights yesterday. "But it does not go very far." The Human Rights Commission will be the body to which citizens can go to have their rights under the convention vindicated.
There were some extraordinary inconsistencies in the Bill, Mr Justice Barrington said. "Article 13 provides that everyone whose rights are contravened should have an effective remedy before a national authority. But when it comes to a piece of legislation which is incompatible with the convention all it can do is give a declaration of incompatibility. This is not an effective remedy.
"It raises the question: is the State fulfilling its responsibility to provide an effective remedy when it clips the wings of the Supreme Court and says it cannot give an effective remedy? I think this arises from the decision not to make the convention part of Irish law."
He said the Government was acting almost as if it was afraid of what the effects of the European Convention on Human Rights would be on Irish administrative practice.
The committee was meeting to hear submissions on the Bill. All its members expressed concern that the time available was too short. They voted unanimously to hold further meetings to accommodate those making submissions.
The meeting, which was chaired by the committee vice-chairwoman, Ms Monica Barnes (FG), also agreed to ask both houses of the Oireachtas to defer the Bill until the autumn in order to allow a full discussion on it, and to take immediately as a separate Bill those sections of it which established the Human Rights Commission on a statutory basis.
The chairman of the committee, Mr Sean Ardagh (FF), had been unable to attend the meeting and arrived as it was being adjourned. He objected that motions had been put without him receiving notice of them.
He asked that the clerk of the committee consider a way to have the motion rescinded. The meeting was adjourned until today.