Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 13 Dec 2000

Vol. 528 No. 2

Adjournment Debate. - Human Rights Commission.

Ms Fitzgerald

I am pleased to have an opportunity to raise on the Adjournment the way in which the Government has dealt with appointments to the Human Rights Commission.

The Human Rights Commission is a very important organisation. Its establishment arises from the Good Friday Agreement and it is governed by the UN Paris principles. I am very concerned, as are many organisations, that in way in which appointments to the commission have been announced the issues of accountability and process have been disregarded. I will raise a number of points in relation to this matter.

The Government has taken a cut and paste approach to appointments to the Human Rights Commission. This is demeaning and humiliating to those already appointed and to those who may yet be appointed. There were reports yesterday of a corrective climbdown. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about this. If it is true, it is a belated admission by the Minister that, despite written advance warnings to him from Fine Gael, he still got it completely wrong.

The ICCL has rightly said that the Government showed a total disregard for the process of transparency in the appointments mechanism which it only accepted with the greatest reluctance following considerable pressure from the human rights sector. I have a letter signed by a group of NGOs who support this view. The distinguished selection committee for members which advised the Minister was chaired by Dr. Whitaker. It included prominent activists in the human rights and voluntary sectors. It shortlisted 16 people out of 177 applicants, and recommended eight people with unanimous priority. The Minister then asked only one of these eight to join the commission. This was a contemptuous way to treat Dr. Whitaker and his committee and, indeed, the entire procedure. Why set up a procedure like this if one is going to subvert in the final analysis?

Already it has been reported that one of the eight people appointed by the Minister is considering her position, presumably because she is deeply embarrassed by the Minister's clumsy and inept handling of the issue. Does this mean resignations before the commission, a vitally important body, in terms of civil and individual rights, even begins its work? To compound the situation, Mr. Justice Barrington also said last weekend that he was surprised at the appointments process.

Why did the Government ignore the recommendations of the selection committee and why has the Minister failed to give reasons for their actions last week? What view was taken by the selection committee on the applications of the four nominees added to the list by the Government? Does the Government intend to take some action to change the situation or will it remain as it is?

The belated course correction, if it is true, seems to suggest that people he has already appointed are not good enough and, therefore, need new colleagues, and yet those likely new colleagues were not deemed good enough by him the first time around to merit appointment. It is typical of the Minister that neither the original announcement of the Human Rights Commission last week nor his proposals put forward yesterday can be found on his Department's website.

I am appalled that such an important body, with such huge implications for human and civil rights, the Human Rights Commission, has been handled in this way by the Government. It suggests that, despite all the scandals this year, nothing has been learned about appointments to public bodies and the need for transparency and openness. The Government set up a procedure which it then did not follow. I look forward to the Minister of State's reply.

Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Miss M. Wallace)

The Minister is unable to attend the House tonight. Deputies will be aware that he is engaged abroad in the signing of the UN Convention to Combat Transnational Organised Crime.

The Human Rights Commission Act, 2000, provides that the Human Rights Commission will have nine members including its president, and it specifies that at least four members of the commission will be men and that at least four members will be women. The Act also emphasises the importance of pluralism in the making of such appointments and it stipulates, in line with a requirement in the 1993 UN Paris Principles and the 1995 UN guidelines, that the members of such commissions should have a background in, or connection with, human rights. Specifically, the Act states that no one can be appointed to the commission unless, in the Government's opinion, they have such relevant experience, qualifications, training or expertise in the general area of human rights issues which are of concern to the commission. The Government, in making these appointments, must also have regard to the need to ensure that membership of the commission also reflects the nature of Irish society.

Section 5 of the Human Rights Commission Act, 2000, governs the position regarding appointments to the Human Rights Commission, and it provides that all nine members, including the president of the commission, are to be appointed by the Government. The Government has already appointed Mr. Justice Donal Barrington, the distinguished former judge of the Supreme Court and of the Court of First Instance of the European Court of Justice, to be president of the commission.

In so far as the ordinary members of the commission are concerned, a selection committee was established under the chairmanship of Dr. TK Whitaker to draw up a list of possible candidates, who were to be considered by the Government for appointment. The other members of the committee were: Ms Inez McCormack, president of ICTU and member of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission; Mr. Frank Murray, former Secretary General to the Government and now a member of the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission; Ms Mary Murphy, nominated by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul; and Mr. Martin O'Brien, director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice in Northern Ireland.

As already announced, the Government offered appointments to the eight positions of part-time commissioner on the commission to the following persons: Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, professor of law, University of Ulster, member of ICCL, who has been involved in several international human rights cases at the European Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice; William Binchy, professor of law, Trinity College, Dublin; Olive Braiden, former director of the Rape Crisis Centre and currently a member of the Courts Service Board; Robert Daly, professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry, UCC, and member of the Southern Health Board, former member of Amnesty International advisory board and currently consultant to that board and founder member Cork Travellers' Support Group; Suzanne Egan, lecturer in human rights law, UCD, former executive member of the Irish Refugee Council and founding member of the Refugee Protection Policy Group; Jane Liddy, former member of the European Commission on Human Rights; Tom O'Higgins, chairman of Concern Worldwide and previously senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers; and Meryvn Taylor, solicitor and former Minister for Equality and Law Reform and currently the Irish member of the European Monitoring Committee on Racism and Xenophobia.

Four of those nominated and offered appointment were drawn from the list of persons recommended by the selection committee. The Deputy might have thought it was only one of them but it was actually four.

Ms Fitzgerald

It was one out of the first eight and four out of 16.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister, without interruption.

Miss M. Wallace

Four of those nominated and offered appointment were drawn from the list of persons recommended by the selection committee. The other four were chosen by the Government on the basis of its judgment as to the overall combination of talents and skills that would best provide human rights development and protection for the public generally in all its diversity.

It is, of course, fundamentally the responsibility and obligation of the Government itself to make that judgment. The fact that the Government had available to it the very excellent recommendations of the selection committee – and this applies to all recommendations made to all Governments – did not mean that it was precluded from making its own judgment as to what combination of skills and talents was required.

Having said that, however, the Minister made it absolutely clear in a statement made at a major human rights conference on Saturday last that the Government would, of course, listen to what others had to say about the human rights framework proposed. He made it clear that he was very much aware of comments that had been made about the nominations and that it was his intention to approach with an open mind the suggestions which were being made concerning the appointments in the context of the general human rights framework which is now in the process of being established. He said:

If we need to change anything, or we need to do more, then we must look at all the options. It would be entirely inconsistent for us to say, on the one hand, that we are at the beginning of a new phase in human rights protection, that we genuinely want to approach the task in the right way, but, at the same time, to say that we have now put it all together, that all is "done and dusted", and that we will not listen to what anybody else has to say about the way forward.

It is against this background that the Minister has now decided that he should respond to suggestions from various groups and individuals for a further widening of the range of interests to be represented on the proposed commission. He is considering the matter at present and he hopes to be in a position to present proposals to the Government next week. The excellent work and recommendations of the selection committee will clearly be of further value to the Government in considering how it should approach the task of widening the range of interests on the committee.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.40 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 14 December 2000.