Remarks by Attorney General Séamus Woulfe SC

• Date: 01 January 2019

137

ANNUAL LECTURE 2018

ONE ISLAND, TWO SYSTEMS: THE

FUTURE OF RIGHTS POST-BREXIT

Remarks by

SÉAMUS WOULFE SC*

Judges, professors, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. I am delighted to be here

this evening to speak on the topic of One Island, Two Systems: the Future of Rights

Post-Brexit. Rights of Irish, British, and European citizens are complex and multi-

faceted. Rooted in the common law, they have developed over centuries in a variety

of ways. I am reading the title of this evening’s event as inviting a discussion on

how the protection of fundamental rights may or may not diverge post-Brexit

in the two jurisdictions on this island. Given the topic of tonight’s discussion, I

would rstly like to address the situation that pertains now, pre-Brexit. I will call

this ‘Part 1’. Presently, rights are derived from multiple sources, including (a) the

European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental

Freedoms (‘ECHR’), (b) the Good Friday Agreement (‘GFA’) (c) the EU Charter

of Fundamental Rights (‘Charter’) and (d) in other UN treaties (such as the

ICCPR) and other EU regulations. I will address the rst three of these sources in

turn as they currently exist, pre-Brexit. Secondly, in Part 2, I would like to identify

some potential issues that may arise in relation to rights post-Brexit. Given that

these issues are of relevance to ongoing negotiations in the context of the UK’s

withdrawal from the EU, I propose to keep my remarks to a very general nature and

I do not propose to comment directly on matters on which work is ongoing. Rather,

I will speak to the wider contextual backdrop from a human rights perspective and

highlight some of the interesting legal debates that this has prompted, in particular

in relation to rights derived from the three sources noted above.

Current position pre-Brexit

Ireland and the UK share a unique and strong connection. As close neighbours

with a shared history, we are perhaps more closely aligned with the UK than with

many neighbours in the EU and elsewhere, not least because we share a land border.

As such, Ireland will be uniquely impacted by Brexit. However, we must ensure the

* Séamus Woulfe SC is Attorney General of Ireland.