International Protection Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-25 ============================================================ Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland I currently serve on the Irish parliamentary delegation to the Council of Europe along with Senator Stephenson. I have great respect for her and for her concerns. I also serve on the committee on the appointment of judges to the European Court of Human Rights. I have taken a great interest in what has happened with Ireland's position in joining the Danish initiative with 25 other countries to ask in effect for a fresh conversation and rebalancing of the interpretation of the convention by the European Court of Human Rights. Senator McDowell mentioned France, Germany and Spain and I find their position interesting. Some 26 countries out of the 46 now on the Council of Europe, since Russia is no longer a member, have a clear position that there has been overreach by the European Court of Human Rights in its interpretation of the convention in such a way as creates unacceptable difficulties for member states as they seek to protect their citizens and promote the common good according to their role. What is interesting about France, Germany and Spain is that in some of those countries it is not that they are on the other side of the argument as Senator McDowell has said. They are on board with the process. It also reflects possible political differences of opinion in their situations. That is what has prevented some of them at least from signing up to the letter as well. I am not normally one for saying that just because everybody is in favour of something that means it is somehow a good idea. The Minister's position on this has to be examined on its merits. Both he and Ireland are in the right in joining with other countries and seeking to interrogate the way the European Court of Human Rights has functioned in respect of these issues, and to ask those hard questions of the court. This has given the Council of Europe and the bureaucracy relating to it a fit of the vapours for the very good reason that they are anxious to prevent any perception that the authority of the court is somehow relative and that this might somehow give succour to countries in respect of cases where decisions have been made by the court that were very much deserved. I refer here to countries that have genuinely frustrated the cause of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The concern with regard to avoiding a perception of relativism or some kind of moral hazard to the effect that certain countries will somehow disregard the common understanding of human rights cannot be turned into some kind of a dogma whereby decisions made by the courts can never be questioned. Courts are sometimes activist, and they sometimes lose their way. It is not just international courts that can lose their way. It is a very important principle of a democracy that there is a separation of powers. When I give talks to students, as I occasionally do, I mention the fact that we can count ourselves fortunate that our judges are independent and that a Taoiseach or a Minister cannot ring up a judge in the middle of the night and say "You had better decide that case this particular way, or else." Sadly, there are people in far too many parts of the world who live under systems whereby there is no separation of powers and where executive power rules all, corrupts the rule of law and frustrates the ability to keep everybody equal before the law. I am aware of all of that. There has to be respect for the independence of the judicial function. Let nobody say that this means that the judicial function is always perfect and always right. There is an NGO that I have a lot of respect for, namely the European Centre of Law and Justice, which has done a considerable amount of research. It looked, for example, at the way the George Soros Open Society Foundation seemed to have an awful lot of influence in forming human rights activists who ended up, in many cases, as I understand it, on the court. There is a great risk of groupthink in the world of human rights on a range of issues. Sometimes, human rights bodies talk as though the ideas they are promoting were handed down from Mount Sinai and cannot be questioned and are somehow a true and authentic interpretation of the context of human rights. That is very far from being the case. Some organisations, even in our own country, have feet of clay. Mr. Liam Herrick of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission gave the Minister a wallop for signing Ireland up to the letter to which I referred earlier with 26 other countries. Mr. Herrick had an association, at one point at least, with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. A number of us here pointed out in recent weeks how the latter had misrepresented the state of the law in Ireland in a booklet that was produced for schools around their obligations regarding pronouns and so on in the context of trans issues. What we saw was a kind of bait and switch----- --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-25