231 / 262
At the very least, if it should agree to renew, it will
be without giving its consent to the important "right of
individual petition" clause. Under this clause any one
person or group of individuals can complain to the
Commission that basic rights have been breached by a
government. In fact, it was under this clause,as de-
fined in Article 25 of the Convention of Human Rights,
that seven individuals from the North brought cases to
the Commission, alleging torture and brutality, and these
cases were declared admissible earlier this year.
Of the fifteen countries that are signatories to the
Convention of Human Rights only three—Turkey,
Cyprus, and Malta—do not accept the clause permit-
ting citizens to have the "right of individual petition"
to the Commission.
It is quite obvious that the Commission would not
like it for one moment if Britain were to go through
with its threat on this clause. That is why the Com-
mission, in its communique at the end of the most
recent four-day hearing in Strasbourg, intimated clearly
that it was now ready to mediate to try and achieve a
friendly settlement between Ireland and Britain.
But the minority in the North will not countenance
the idea of the Irish Government entering into a friendly
settlement until internment and detention are ended,
and until Britain has given clear guarantees that there
will be no further torture of detainees in the course of
interrogation.
While the Irish Government is preserving a tight-
lipped silence on its tactics in the case, obviously fear-
ful that Britain might complain to the Commission,
there are civil servants in Whitehall who do not seem
to be as squeamish in their approach. Judicious "leaks"
will soon make it appear, on a European and world-wide
basis, that Ireland is acting "the dog-in-the-manger"
and setting its face against a settlement, when Britain
is only too anxious to settle.
But, of course, the Irish Government's prime duty
is not to the faceless men in Whitehall, but to the
minority in the North.
The Attorney-General, Mr. Declan Costello, is fully
aware now that no matter what threats Britain con-
veys to the Commission, or no matter in what subtle
diplomatic language they are couched, the plain fact of
the matter is that there are great, fundamental issues
involved in this case and the Irish Government cannot
—and must not—agree to a friendly settlement unless
it gets the guarantees sought at the last four-day hearing.
Internment must end and the Geneva Codes must
be fully observed in the treatment of detainees. There
can be no half-settlement where these basic issues are
concerned.
Irish Independent
(5 October 1973)
Deserted wives talks progressing with U«K«
The Minister for Justice, Mr. Cooney, announced last
night that substantial progress had been made in the
negotiation of an agreement between this country and
Britain for the mutual enforcement in each country of
maintenance and affiliation orders made by the Courts
in each country.
Mr. Cooney, addressing the Irish Association of Civil
Liberty in Dublin on the subject "Dark Corners of the
Law", said that the progress had been achieved following
a series of meetings in his Department last month.
The Minister said that one such "dark corner" was
the legal disadvantage under which married women and
their children suffered if the marriage broke down.
He said that for a deserted wife her situation, bad
enough by being deserted, was often aggravated by the
difficulty or impossibility of getting maintenance from
her husband for herself and the children, especially if
the husband had gone away to England or some other
country.
Mr. Cooney said that he had expressed his feelings on
this and related problems, such as those concerning
unmarried mothers and their children, on several occa-
sions, in the Dail and elsewhere.
Another very important and difficult problem which
arose when a husband deserted his wife was that of the
right of the wife to remain in the matrimonial home.
The difficulty here was that the home might be in the
husband's name and he might, before the desertion, have
negotiated for its sale to an innocent third party, or he
might have been in arrears with mortgage payments or
fallen into arrears after the desertion.
On the other hand, the wife would, morally speaking,
have contributed to the home, if not with money of her
own, certainly with hard work, and it was obviously
wrong that she should be liable to be turned out for no
fault of her own.
The need to protect the wife while taking proper
account of the rights of innocent third parties, involved
a difficult problem which must be faced and solved in as
satisfactory a way as its nature allowed, he said.
Mr. Cooney added that these problems of family law
were presently under examination by the Committee of
Court Practice and Procedure under the chairmanship
of Judge Walsh. He had specifically extended the terms
of reference of this committee so that that particular
"dark corner of the law" could be thoroughly investi-
gated with the utmost speed.
Order Revoked
District Justice Herman Good said that an examin-
ation of the Married Women's Maintenance in the Case
of Desertion Act 1886 would reveal many dark corners.
If a wife who secured a maintenance order committed
an adulterous act she could have the order in her favour
revoked if the husband discovered her act. Yet if the
husband committed adultery the wife could do nothing.
As the husband was usually the owner of the home, that
meant that a "wife could be put out while her husband
was allowed to have all the mistresses he wished in her
absence.
There was no provision in this country for having
portion of the husband's wages "attached", as there was
in England. The wife who got a maintenance order very
often had to go to her husband's place of employment
and beg the money she was entitled to in order to keep
herself and her children. In England there was provision
for having a portion of the husband's income deducted
from his pay at source and paid over to the wife.
It was a fact of life in Ireland and all over the world
that there was a serious breakdown in married life. The
rate of breakdowns in Ireland was increasing, and it
was interesting to note the reasons. Of a recent group of
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