The annual MacGill Summer School held in Glenties, Co Donegal features a keynote address each year in honour of John Hume. This year, Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, who will take up her new post as European Ombudsman in October, addressed the topic of "How Stands the Republic?" in her speech. Ms O’Reilly focused on the lack of democratic accountability in our political and administrative systems. She criticized the increasing control of the executive over the Oireachtas and the failure of Oireachtas members to hold the Government to account and act as defenders of the public interest. She also criticized the undermining of other supposedly independent watchdog bodies, illustrating her arguments with a number of examples from her own time as Ombudsman and the various attempts to stifle her independence, hamper her investigations and curb her attempts at reform.
Another example she focused on was the recent process around creating a new merged Human Rights and Equality Commission. Ms O’Reilly was asked to chair an independent Committee to select members of the new body, but experienced significant interference by the Department of Justice, Equality and Defence in her work, including the blocking of one of the persons they wished to nominate, FLAC’s Senior Solicitor, Michael Farrell and the Department’s insistence on excluding any former members of the Irish Human Rights Commission or the Equality Authority from appointment as Chief Commissioner of the new body.
Ms O’Reilly outlined in no uncertain terms how the executive took control of what was supposed to be an independent process. She also described how the infrastructure for an area of crucial competence for democracy in Ireland – the area of human rights and equality – has been steadily eroded over the past years. The Ombudsman expressed her worries for the future of our democratic republic in the face of such bureaucratic and political autocracy, zoning in on our society’s failure to recognise why we keep repeating the same mistakes on human rights abuses and inequality,
"I do not question the bona fides of the current Justice Minister in relation to the proposed new IHREC, but I have concerns about the influence of that mysterious thing called the "system" that I got a fleeting glance at a few short years ago. We have much to pride ourselves on in this Republic but we should remember that our failures are essentially human rights failures and we should be particularly alive to the fact that never more so than at a time of recession and austerity are bodies such as a Human Rights Commission and an Equality Authority needed to make sure that in a decade's time we won't be weeping our way through another pitiful cataloguing of State inflicted abuse albeit with a modern twist."
Click here to read her full speech.