The IHRC, Open for Business!

I had given up hope of ever seeing any signs of economic recovery in
Ireland. After all, all Ireland's industries are in recession, and
people have been laid off all over the place. Imagine my feigned
surprise when I discovered that one industry seemed to be growing, and
in fact had an actual job advertisement on its website!

That organisation is of course, the Irish Human Rights Commission, who
have advertised here under "New
Internship and Professional Placement Opportunities".

Well, not really. They aren't actually planning on paying anybody, but
you can apply to work for them for free.

And not only that, but according to their Code of Conduct document,

"For the avoidance of doubt, the Intern acknowledges that she/he is not an employee of the Commission and has no entitlements to employment protection or benefits under statute, contract, common law or otherwise and the Intern undertakes not to make any employment related claim of any nature against the Commission during or after this Agreement, under statute, contract, common law or otherwise. Furthermore, the Unfair Dismissals Acts 1977-2001 shall not apply to the termination of this contract either on the cessor of the term or otherwise."

Aha. So not only must you work for the Commission for free, you not
under any circumstances have any actual rights.

So, I wondered to myself what sort of person would lumber themselves
with such a responsibility. Someone with an Arts Degree perhaps
(that's me!). More likely someone with an Arts Degree coupled with the
desire to pursue a career in the Human Rights industry. That's not so
much me.

In fact, I can't imagine anything worse that working for what is
essentially, the Irish thought-police. I imagine staff at the IHRC
sitting in a batcave-like office, waiting for word from around the
country that someone's Human Rights have been violated, causing them
to spring into action to liberate someone.

I always thought we had police and courts for this sort of thing, but
now we have an new tier of protection against misbehaviours of all
kinds. But do they always protect the right people, and which side do
they take when Human Rights collide (as they inevitably do when the
list of them gets longer)?

Take a recent case.

A new Bill, which the IHRC "is still in the process of examining"
(must be short staffed), wants to make it possible for Gardai to 'move
beggars on' where they are in certain locations, such as near private
home or, interestingly, near ATMs.

Now, any fool can see what this law is about, but for a certain type
of person, it is a human rights issue, i.e. the rights of beggars. The
IHRC, in spite of the fact they haven't read it yet, claim the Bill
"could result in criminalisation of vulnerable people". It may be
worth asking, but, at 3am on a Saturday morning, when a lone woman
stands at an ATM on O'Connell street next to a drunk 30-year-old man
with an outstretched hand, who exactly is the 'vulnerable' party?

Now, from a Libertarian point of view, there is nothing criminal about
an individual walking up to another individual in a public place and
initiating a conversation, even if that conversation involves request
for money. It's a free country, we might say. (The law is, however,
curiously not broken when money received ostensibly for the purchase
of a sandwich is instead spent on Dutch Gold - and yet if I were to
extract a euro from you "for Haiti", say, and instead spent it on a
sandwich, that would constitute fraud. hm.)

The free-country argument, however, rests on the assumption of Individual
Freedom, which has traditionally been understood as the basis of all
human rights, "we hold these truths to be self-evident", etc.

But the modern concept of Human Rights as embodied by the IHRC does
not mention that. Their concept seems more of a juggling act between
different sets of 'vulnerable groups', be they beggars or anyone else.
Human Rights rather takes the place of freedom, even when, in this
instance, an argument based on individual freedom is what best serves
the interests of the vulnerable.

This nicely illustrates a difference between a classically liberal understanding of Human Rights, and that of the IHRC - or what I tend to refer to as the Equality Industry. The Equality Industry in Canada for example, which is far more advanced down the thought-police path  than is Ireland's fledgling Commission, routinely ignores Supreme Court rulings, see here,

More on this later :)