Read Michael's paper on the forthcoming merger of the IHRC and Equality Authority, delivered to the Hanna Sheehy Skeffington School April 2012
Irish Examiner, April 17th 2012
Up to now, the job of providing support to individuals who feared discrimination was, generally speaking, carried out by the Equality Authority. I remember how outspoken we all were when the last government decimated the budget of that authority, to the point where its chief executive Niall Crowley resigned in protest. (Incidentally, that brave act remains one of the few examples in Irish history of a public servant making himself unemployed on a point of principle. Imagine how much better off we’d be if a few others had his courage.)
we should not fool ourselves into thinking of human rights as a coherent ideology nor of the international human rights system as a panacea. This is not a point that goes without saying. Assumptions about the utility of human rights, or a human rights based approach, need to be challenged not so as to cancel out any interest but so as to foster a proportionate sense of value.
By Vincent Browne, Irish Times
The economic and financial crisis offers an opportunity to reshape this society, making it more democratic, fair and equal, and giving it a robust sense of solidarity. We are not talking about revolution here, nor communism, but changes which, intuitively, we all (or most of us) would welcome.
