Ireland should move towards adopting a more unified approach to human rights in which national and international laws would be interlocked, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson.
Mrs Robinson was giving the second annual lecture for the Irish Council of Civil Liberties, which she co-founded along with the South African Minister for Education, Mr Kader Asmal, the president of the Human Rights Commission, Judge Donal Barrington, and others in 1976.
Mrs Robinson commented on the absence of references to the international conventions Ireland had signed in judgments of the Irish superior courts. She referred in particular to the TD vs the Minister for Education case which came before the Supreme Court late last year, where the Government appealed against a High Court judgment requiring it to provide suitable accommodation for a troubled youth. The Supreme Court upheld the State's appeal.
"In that judgment it appears that the Supreme Court was holding that social and economic rights are non-judiciable in Irish courts," Mrs Robinson said. "There was no reference in the judgment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child or the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both of which Ireland has signed. There was also no reference to that judgment in Ireland's recent report to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," she said.
She pointed out that in its report on Ireland, which became public earlier this week, the committee was critical of the Disabilities Bill for not taking a rights-based approach. Such an approach was central to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
"In the modern era, there is a growing need to see that human rights protection is not split. We need a single system, a common conception of an interlocking system of national and international human rights protection."
The courts should take note of international jurisprudence in this area, she said. She referred to the jurisprudence of the Indian Supreme Court, which had decided that social and economic rights were justiciable. It did so on the basis of an article in the Indian constitution copied virtually verbatim from the Irish Constitution, but interpreted differently by the Indian Supreme Court.
Human rights commissions had an important role in pointing governments in the right direction and reminding them of their human rights obligations, she said.
She also praised the work of human rights defenders in raising awareness and putting pressure on governments to meet their obligations.
Earlier, in her capacity as chancellor of Trinity College Dublin, Mrs Robinson visited Pearse House community centre in Pearse Street, which is undergoing refurbishment at an estimated cost of €4.5 million.