Alternative Report on Ireland’s Fifth Review under ICCPR

30th May 2022

IPRT welcomed the opportunity to provide this alternative report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee to supplement Ireland’s (‘the State’) Reply to the List of Issues provided by the Committee following the fifth periodic review under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The IPRT report highlights key concerns relating to persons deprived of their liberty and prison conditions in the State. This report should be read alongside the State Report as well as the State Reply to the List of Issues. The IPRT report does not solely focus on omissions or deficiencies with the State’s reports but also on issues that are of key priority to the work of IPRT.

Key issues discussed in the IPRT report include:

• Lack of an open prison for women (Article 3, Equality for men and women)
• Response of the detention system to COVID-19 (Article 4, Derogations)
• Investigations into deaths in custody in Irish prisons (Article 6, Right to life)
• Ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) (Article 7, Freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment)
• Monitoring, oversight and complaints in prisons (Article 7, Freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment)
• Imprisonment for non-payment of fines (Article 9, The right to liberty and security of the person & Article 11, No one shall be imprisoned merely on the ground of inability to fulfil a contractual obligation)
• The use of imprisonment as a sanction of last resort, the use of pre-trial detention and the separation of remand from sentenced prisoners, out-of-cell time, solitary confinement, single-cell accommodation, in-cell sanitation, violence in prisons, mental health in the prison system (Article 10, The rights of prisoners)
• Travellers in the criminal justice system (Article 2, Non-discrimination & Article 27 Rights of minority groups)
• The impact of COVID-19 on family visits to prison (Article 23, The rights of the family)

You can read the full alternative report by IPRT here.

Read other reports and submissions to Ireland’s Fifth Review under ICCPR on the UN website here.