O’Callaghan comments ‘worrying’ – IRC solicitor
The managing solicitor at the Irish Refugee Council (IRC) has described recent statements from Minister for Justice Jim O‘Callaghan as “very worrying”.
Katie Mannion was speaking during a panel discussion on ‘making rights meaningful for all communities’ at the annual conference of the Law Society’s Human Rights Committee (28 November).
The minister last month announced a range of changes to asylum and citizenship legislation, saying that they were aimed at ensuring that the migration and asylum system was rules-based and efficient.
“Human rights are about holding the State to account, and yet our Minister for Justice is suggesting that it's about balancing certain groups of rights-holders against others,” she stated.
The IRC solicitor added that there was a lot of scope for human-rights lawyers to “counter narratives” on international protection.
Accommodation crisis
Speaking about litigation, Mannion told the event that there had to be a legal response to the accommodation crisis that faced asylum-seekers arriving in Ireland, as people arriving in Ireland faces “complete destitution on the streets”.
The EU’s highest court, answering questions referred to it by the High Court in a case taken by the IRC, found earlier this year that Ireland could not use an unexpected influx of asylum-seekers as justification for evading its obligation to cover their basic needs.
The case will now be back before the Irish courts in the coming weeks.
The IRC solicitor also told the conference that her organisation had to take a strategic approach to such litigation, as many affected individuals did not want to be involved in court proceedings at all, largely out of fear.
‘Systemic gap’
On the same panel, Catherine Cosgrave (managing solicitor, Immigrant Council of Ireland) said that the council had to pick and choose the cases it took carefully, focusing on those that, while they were specific to an individual, also highlighted a “systemic gap” in the wider legal structure.
She added that the council went beyond individual cases and collaborated with other organisations on issues such as statelessness.
“We engage in every mechanism that is available to us to affect change, for any other cohort or individual who may be similarly affected by that particular issue,” she added.
Freedom of speech
The conference’s keynote address was given by Mr Justice Gerard Hogan of the Supreme Court, who told the event that freedom of speech should be at the heart of the work of a human-rights lawyer – including “freedom for the thought that we hate”, he added, quoting US Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Mr Justice Hogan told the event that, although freedom of speech could not be absolute, every human-rights lawyer should seek to uphold that right.
“The human-rights lawyer must uphold the Constitution and the law and seek to defend and cherish a democratic society,” he added.
The Supreme Court judge concluded that “Justice: the guardian of liberty” – a message that appears in the US Supreme Court – was, in essence, the motto of the human-rights lawyer.
Environmental litigation
Community Law and Mediation (CLM) chief executive Aoife Kelly Desmond spoke about the law centre’s Centre for Environmental Justice (CEJ).
She pointed out that climate-change issue, such as heatwaves or air pollution, often affected the more vulnerable in society.
“People often don’t know that environmental or climate issues are affecting them,” she stated.
Kelly Desmond cited CLM’s role in removing an illegal dump in Darndale in north Dublin, pointing out that this was a socio-economic, as well as an environmental issue.
“It was never going to be a ‘Dalkey dumping’ case,” she said, adding that part of the CEJ’s work was about empowering communities to believe that they could take action on such issues.
The solicitor said that her organisation also focused on strategic climate-related litigation “to try to make a bigger change”.
The CEJ is acting as plaintiff, along with individual plaintiffs, for the first time in a case being taken against the Government over its Climate Action Plan 2024, with the organisation contending that the plan fails to meet the State’s legally binding climate obligations.