The Gazette 1973

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 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« 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 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 228