RIGHTS AND JUSTICE IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) has been funding work in Northern Ireland since 1972. In 1993 it began to think about developing a programme in the Republic (of Ireland), focusing on rights and justice. But first, the Trust wanted to understand the existing rights and justice situation there and the needs of voluntary organisations working on these issues. The resulting Report was published as Rights and justice work in Ireland (1).

In 2001, the Trust commissioned a fresh study of the rights and justice situation in the Republic. JRCT wanted to –

• Collect key data on the demographic, economic, social and political situation; report on and analyse the rights and justice situation;

• Examine the state of the voluntary sector in general;

• Map the main rights and justice organisations and

• Study current funding for rights and justice work.

Conclusions and key recommendations

The Report concludes that there is a substantial rights and justice agenda to be addressed in the Republic (of Ireland) over the first decade of the new millennium. The Republic (of Ireland) has one of the most unequal societies in Europe, a political system notorious for corruption and cronyism, standards of human rights far below international norms and serious abuses of the human rights of mentally ill prisoners. There is an on-going need to challenge injustice, the infringements of human rights and the lack of accountability of government to the people.

JRCT - and other funders - should fund work to:

• Support voluntary organisations working with emerging immigrant communities and those who have sought asylum in the Republic (of Ireland);

• Ensure that the Human Rights Commission lives up to its brief and expectations;

• Resource rights and justice organisations to be effective contributors to policy making;

• Ensure that the new north-south institutions properly engage citizens and are not just an exchange between political and administrative elites;

• Strengthen those parts of the rights and justice sector that are weakest and most fragmented, for example, in ensuring transparency and fighting corruption;

• Find new ways of stimulating new democratic ideas (e.g. think tanks).

This is the conclusions and key recommendations section of the Summary Report⁽²⁾ of the Rights and Justice work in Ireland study.

Further Information on these Reports can be obtained by accessing the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust website:www.jrct.org.uk 

⁽¹⁾ Brian Harvey: Rights and justice work in Ireland. Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, York, 1993; and Rights and justice work - an update. Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, York, 1996

⁽²⁾ Brian Harvey: Rights and justice work in Ireland 2001: A new base line. Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, York, 2002.