The Minister for Justice Mr John O'Donoghue said today he would be introducing legislation to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights, (ECHR), into Irish law next month.
Speaking at a Law Society conference on Human Rights, Mr O'Donoghue said draft legislation to incorporate the ECHR into law was agreed last September and should be fully in place before the summer.
Ireland is the last State of the forty-one members of the Council of Europe to do so even though it was one of the first, on the entry into force of the ECHR in 1953, to permit individual petitions to be made to the European Court of Human Rights. The rights of the individual will now be additionally protected.
The move arises from the Belfast Agreement, where the Government undertook to examine the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The agreement states that the measures brought forward by the Government would ensure "at least an equivalent level of protection of human rights as will pertain in Northern Ireland".