MEMBERS VIEWS
'The Merger of the Equality Authority & Irish Human Rights Commission' by Michael Farrell FLAC
Read Michael's paper on the forthcoming merger of the IHRC and Equality Authority, delivered to the Hanna Sheehy Skeffington School April 2012
'Tánaiste, Labour needs to keep an eye on Bruton and Shatter' By Fergus Finlay,
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.)
"Human Rights – What Ireland says, and what it does: the case for an alternative compliance model" Donncha O'Connell April 2012
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.
