This October, the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) and the Law Society of Ireland will host the 10th Annual Human Rights Conference, Promoting and Protecting Human Rights in Ireland: The Role of the Irish Constitution and European Law. The conference will examine the impact of the Irish Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights and EU law in advancing human(…)
This is a busy time of year for human rights reporting. In addition to those we have already highlighted, a number of important reports of interest to the wider Irish human rights community have been published recently: The Irish Report of the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty was published on May 17. It(…)
Today’s Irish Examiner reports that a new wording for a children’s rights referendum is now being drafted by the Attorney General. According to the report, Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Dáil that the all-party consensus and the wording resulted in a “range of unintended policy and resource implications”. The suggestion that the wording proposed by(…)
One of the first High Court judgments to be delivered on the assessment of needs process outlined in the Disability Act 2005 was recently brought to light by the Irish Times (here). The decision of Justice Hanna in HSE v Dykes clarified that the age limit for applications for an assessment of need will be(…)
The Faculty of Law, UCC, will be hosting an event on ‘Children’s Rights: The Proposed Constitutional Amendment’ on Thursday April 15. Speakers will include: Emily Logan, Ombudsman for Children; Dr Conor O’Mahony, Lecturer in Constitutional Law, University College Cork; Rosemary Horgan, Family Law Solicitor, Ronan Daly Jermyn & Co. The seminar will be chaired by(…)
The High Court has today rejected a challenge to the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 2006 which was based on a claim of gender discrimination. The case involved a young man, now aged 18, who had sexual intercourse with a girl of 14 when he himself was 15. The legislation in question provides for the offences(…)
The return of Jon Venables, one of the men (then boys) convicted of the murder of Jamie Bulger has sparked a fresh debate on how we respond to children who commit crimes and what we expect the criminal justice system to achieve in such cases. Today the Ministry of Justice in the UK has announced(…)
You can learn more about Fergus Ryan on our guest contributors page. Waiting for family law reform is a bit like waiting for a bus. You linger forlornly for what seems likes an eternity, stoically weathering the elements. Then, just as you are about to give up, along comes a bus — and two more(…)
You can learn more about Ursula Kilkelly on our guest contributors page. The report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the amendment to the Irish Constitution includes a proposal to include what is commonly known as the ‘best interests principle’ into the new Article 42 in two forms. The first form appears in Article 42.1.2°(…)
You can learn more about Jillian van Turnhout on our guest contributors page. The vision of the Children’s Rights Alliance is that Ireland will be one of the best places in the world to be a child. On 16 February 2010, the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children moved us that bit closer(…)
