THE Government is encroaching on its international treaty obligations by its use of emergency legislation and some of its new legislation, according to the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights.
The US based committee is presenting its draft report, At the Crossroads: Human Rights and the Northern Ireland Peace Process, to the Irish and British governments this week.
While the bulk of it deals with the North, it also discusses human rights in the Republic.
"Successive Irish governments have vaunted their human rights record abroad, but there has been insufficient scrutiny of this record," said Prof Fionnuala Ni Aolain, a lecturer in international law and human rights in Columbia University, New York, and one of the authors of the report.
"Legislation brought in under the guise of the emergency spill over from Northern Ireland has seeped into ordinary law," she said.
Prof Ni Aolain, who was brought up in Spiddal and taught law in Queen's University, Belfast before moving to the US, referred specifically to the use of the Special Criminal Court in the Republic.
"The right to trial by jury is fundamental. There is now a two tier legal system.
"The Special Criminal Court has never been reviewed, and a lot of offences which should go before the ordinary courts now go before the Special Criminal Court."