I thank the Seanad for agreeing to deal with this matter so expeditiously.
The passage of this relatively simple and straightforward Bill will allow me to make the necessary establishment day order under section 3 of the Human Rights Commission Act, 2000, immediately following its signing into law by the President. This will mean that the Human Rights Commission, which has been operating for the past few months on an interim basis, will be fully constituted and can proceed immediately to fulfil its wide operational mandate and remit as set out in the legislation.
The need for the amendment arises from the fact that the Human Rights Commission Act, 2000, provides for a nine member commission. However, following the initial appointments, the Government decided, in the interests of providing for a wider sphere of representation of interests on the commission, to increase the number to 15 by appointing six further human rights commissioners. The Government, in taking this step, acknowledged the reservations expressed by many of the interested groups and organisations in the human rights area in the matter. The Bill provides the necessary statutory cover for these additional six appointments to the commission. While the commission, as already stated, has been meeting as an interim body in recent months to deal mainly with general financial, accommodation and staffing matters, it is apparent that this state of affairs should not be allowed to continue for much longer. To develop its work programmes and strategies and fulfil its role under the Good Friday Agreement, particularly with regard to the establishment of the joint committee of representatives with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, it needs to have full statutory authority.
It was the Government's original intention that the provision in this separate Bill could have been enacted fairly expeditiously as part of the European Convention on Human Rights Bill, 2001, which is now awaiting Committee Stage in the other House. Following the wishes of the two Governments as expressed in last year's Hillsborough Agreement to implement fully all the outstanding matters under the Good Friday Agreement by June of this year, we had hoped to have the convention Bill enacted during the current session of the Oireachtas. However, that expectation proved to be somewhat optimistic. To meet the deadline to which I refer, the timescale for the consultative process with the various groups in the human rights area who wished to submit comments and observations on the substantive provisions of the convention Bill would have had to be abridged very significantly.
The convention Bill is an important measure. It is also complex in that it seeks to balance the interplay between rights under the Constitution and rights under the convention in a way which fully takes account of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty as enshrined in the Constitution, as well as the related matter of the State's dualist approach to the giving of effect in our laws to the commitments entered into by our accession and ratification of international treaties. In the area of human rights and fundamental freedoms, this is a matter which has to be absolutely correct and, while the consultation process will delay progress on the Bill, the Government fully accepts that the views of interested organisations in this important area should be heard and considered. So as not to delay the establishment of the Human Rights Commission any longer, however, the Government wishes to proceed with the Bill now before the Seanad. I have always said that if this situation should come to pass, the Government would deal with it by means of a separate Bill, and we are delivering on that commitment.