It remains the task of governments to implement the fundamental human rights standards which should influence all aspects of globalisation, including even trade talks, and to be answerable for this in a democratic way. The structure is international, but the accountability is national and I would like to see that accountability being more penetrating at regional and local level, especially in federal systems.

You can convene a wider cross-section if you have no turf to defend, because then you don't cut across anyone else's agenda and you can achieve a great deal.

I'm coming to a sense of a women's movement which was extraordinarily important in the struggle for freedom in Ireland and immediately afterwards, but then some of those women who were involved in the movement got involved in representative positions and perhaps some of them got a bit distanced from the grassroots issues. But also the women's movement itself seemed to say, "No, we've got our own government, our own parties in power" and they sat back.

The MDGs have been useful in moving human rights and development discourse together and in highlighting the need for greater accountability at all levels.

I don't think we in Ireland have to follow slavishly what other countries have done. Ireland has its own strengths - in family life, in the local community, in the concept of meitheal, a very traditional form of cooperation in rural Ireland. Three or four or five neighbors get together, exchanging labor, farm equipment, and so on. There are strong solidarity overtones. That tradition is being translated today into community self-development.

Human rights are inscribed in the hearts of people; they were there long before lawmakers drafted their first proclamation.

An endless war against terrorism can tend to inflate the terrorists, because being at war is attractive to some angry, unemployed, disaffected youth.