How is the Government shaping up on key human rights?

A consultation taking place in Dublin today (Friday, April 24th) marks another step in an important legal process: this June Ireland will face a United Nations expert committee in Geneva to account for how it has respected, protected and promoted the fundamental human rights of its people in vital areas like health, housing, education, work, family life, social security, cultural life and living standards.

Today’s gathering, organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is to allow the Government to explain its submissions to the UN for assembled civil society organisations. These groups have also submitted crucial evidence and experiences to the UN expert committee, mainly through a “parallel” report co-ordinated by FLAC called Our Voice, Our Rights.

The June examination will be an intense debate between a committee of UN experts on economic and social rights and the Irish Government. In this legal process, the debate will rest not just on Government testimony, but also on evidence from civil society bodies and from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. The committee will not just hear the Government accounting for its actions, but will have a plethora of alternative information from a wide range of people working on the ground on these issues. Its conclusions and recommendations will take all of that into account.

Unlike a court hearing, both government and non-government groups do their best to avoid making this a point-scoring exercise; they will try to highlight how (the government will say) human rights have been protected and promoted or how (non-governmental organisations will say) there are truly enormous gaps in how the state has met that duty. Failures to adequately uphold human rights are failures by Ireland to comply with its solemn legal obligations in a treaty, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ratified by the Oireachtas on behalf of the Irish people in 1989.

Under this treaty, Ireland has a duty to respect, protect and fulfil basic obligations in economic, social and cultural rights. By law, it must take whatever legal, budgetary or administrative measures it can to fulfil those rights for the people of Ireland, without discrimination. If the State attempts to reduce these basic rights below a minimum level, it has the burden of proof to show how this was absolutely essential and unavoidable.

This is where the UN expert committee will likely hear very different views. The Irish Government will try to argue that the recession justified failure to protect and progress rights. Having collaborated on painting a realistic picture of life for people in our society over the last seven or eight years, civil society organisations will say that, in our view, the Irish Government did not make choices which took its human rights obligations into account.

We will say that banks and sovereign debt were prioritised, even where that meant disproportionate cuts to health, education and housing. We will say that some vulnerable groups were not sufficiently protected – like lone parents, disabled people, children, Travellers, older people. Ireland is now the most unequal country in the EU, according to TASC in its recent report, Cherishing all Equally. Deprivation and consistent poverty have increased annually since 2008, evidenced by the 12 per cent of children living in poverty in Ireland in 2013. Yet the most recent State response to the committee, quoting the ESRI, claims that "social transfers are equally effective in reducing child poverty and that the performance has increased since 2004".

On housing, strategies and future plans dominate the State response, aiming “to increase the supply of social housing and reduce the number of people on waiting lists”. The Government talks about a housing assistance payment to replace rent supplement, which itself was only ever intended as a short-term support. But the recession turned rent supplement into an essential prop for people in long-term housing need. Almost no investment was prioritised for building and providing adequate accommodation. The mortgage interest supplement was abolished.

Our Voice Our Rights highlights unrealistically low threshold limits for rent supplement, but also contextualises it: in the current private rental sector, there is a limited and sub-standard supply of private rented accommodation, with many landlords refusing to accept tenants on rent supplement. A change of payment will not alter that reality. With more than 90,000 people on the housing list and the looming threat of repossession for many thousand more households in deep mortgage arrears, housing supply is an urgent problem for this Government.

This examination process is important. Human rights are not optional extras to be remembered when an election is looming or when there are a few extra euro in the kitty. The reporting process has already led us to assemble a wealth of information on what happened to people during the recession. This is a rare if not unique chance for an overview of the damage that ignoring human rights does in society. We will get an objective assessment of government performance to date and strong guidelines for the future. We need them.

Noeline Blackwell is Director General of FLAC (Free Legal Advice Centres). See www.ourvoiceourrights.ie