A Chara, - I welcome Carol Coulter's article on the UNHCR's recommendations regarding amendments to the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill currently before the Oireachtas (The Irish Times, March 13th). The UNHCR's report is an excellent analysis of the legislation. It includes 76 groups of recommendations for change to the current Bill.
Similar points were made last year by the Irish Human Rights Commission in response to the Bill produced by the former minister for justice. This has been ignored to date by the officials and the Minister at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
It is important that bodies such at the UNHCR and the IHRC are listened to by the Government. For instance the powers and functions of the IHRC are set out in the Human Rights Commission Acts 2000 and 2001. The Human Rights Commission Act, 2000 confers a wide-ranging jurisdiction on the Commission to promote and protect human rights as defined both in international agreements to which Ireland is a party and in the Irish Constitution. Its functions include making recommendations to government on measures to strengthen, protect and uphold human rights in the State and to keep under review the adequacy and effectiveness of law and practice relating to the protection of human rights.
It is therefore difficult to understand how the Department of Justice can ignore the report of a body established by an Act of parliament for the very purpose of making such recommendations.
As an NGO dealing every day with the consequences of poor government legislation and policies, we ask the Oireachtas committee to consider in detail the recommendations of the reports of the IHRC and the UNHCR, which we fully support. - Is mise,
GERTRUDE COTTER,
Director, Nasc,
The Irish Immigrant Support Centre,
Mary Street,
Cork.