Bernstein Fellow Casey on Experience at Mercy Law Resources Centre

Conor Casey ’17 LLM is currently a Bernstein Fellow at the Mercy Law Resources Centre (MLRC), a Dublin-based public interest law center dedicated to providing legal assistance and policy advocacy for those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Conor is also pursuing a Ph.D. in law at Trinity College Dublin, where he received an LL.B. (Law) in 2015. Before coming to Yale, Conor spent a year working as a legal researcher to a Senior Counsel of the Bar of Ireland. 

At MLRC, Conor recently drafted a report, The Right to Housing in Comparative Perspective, which analyzes the political context of the right to housing in Ireland and includes several case studies of other countries that have protected the right to housing. In the following interview with the Schell Center, he discussed the report and other aspects of his experience thus far at MLRC.

Why did you choose to do your Bernstein Fellowship at MLRC?

MLRC is the only public interest law center dedicated to homelessness in the country. I did an internship with them after completing my undergraduate degree at Trinity and loved it. It was very emotionally draining work, but I was so struck by the staff’s selflessness, professionalism, warmth, and their empathy for clients that when I left, I thought to myself I would absolutely go back if I could.

MLRC advises thousands of clients every year, takes cases before welfare and housing tribunals and even to the Supreme Court occasionally. MLRC’s focus on casework gives the organization a good vantage point to see what policy changes are needed to help their clients. MLRC helps people get emergency accommodation and other things that are very important immediately, but they also look at things systemically. I think this hybrid approach is the only way to solve the homelessness crisis. In recent years, homelessness has got exponentially worse in Ireland. Today, most people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness are young families with children or single-parent households, which are being squeezed out of private rent accommodation and forced to live in hostels or on the streets for months or even years. MLRC is a small organization and the staff stretch themselves to address all of this, but they don’t compromise their effectiveness.

What projects have you been working on as a Bernstein Fellow?

I help give legal advice: we have regular clinics in which we meet clients, listen to their stories, and we see if there’s any legal remedy or solution available or advocacy work we can do on their behalf with the relevant authorities. I’m also assisting with case preparation. I help come up with legal arguments we might use in litigation – such as arguing for the right to shelter with international human rights norms enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and other documents.

But the bulk of my work has been policy-related. I drafted a report in which I applied a comparative legal lens to the right to housing, which was published in March. And I’m currently drafting a report on the legal and administrative redress that are available to children who find themselves residing in emergency hostel accommodations, often in poor conditions and for long periods of time, and best practices elsewhere for caring for children. The conclusion of the report as that these forms of redress are very minimal, and that the existing dispute resolution models lack the bite to compel policy change.

What are you hoping will be the results of advocacy work around the report and your other work at the organization? What impact do you think it has to—as part of this advocacy—apply supranational human rights norms or a comparative law approach to domestic law and problems, such as homelessness?

In Ireland, international human rights law is not binding in courts, so what we’ve tried to do at MLRC is argue that provisions of the Irish constitution relating to children and family life should be read harmoniously with international human rights standards. So in lobbying governments and engaging with international human rights bodies, such as the UN’s Universal Periodic Review process, we do make arguments that Ireland is in breach of obligations to provide basic, adequate shelter. We can also argue correctly that Ireland has incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into law, and is therefore bound to fulfill Article 3—which relates to the prohibition on degrading treatment—and Article 8—on the protection to private and family life.

In Ireland, when there are debates on the right to housing, both those in favor of and opposed to housing reform make the assumption that the only way to protect the right to housing is to make it a constitutional entitlement. In our report, we show that this focus on constitutional protections is myopic, and that there’s no one-size-fits-all mechanism: some countries, such as Finland, have parliamentary committee review systems; others make the right to housing statutory, which means it can be more easily amended in light of changing circumstances than a constitutional right. We want to present the reality to both sides that there are alternatives that may be more politically palatable than creating a constitutional right to housing. We’re hoping to present the report to the Parliament’s housing committee in a couple months, and hopefully that’ll be a chance to air some of these concerns.

At the Bernstein Symposium, you said that your work had taught you about the importance of political will in enacting proposed reforms. How did the report lead you to that conclusion?

Our day-to-day experience and the comparative report confirm that the political will to fairly allocate resources is crucial to addressing the homelessness crisis in Ireland. In systems where there is a legal entitlement to shelter: that can only act as a basic floor of protection – it can be a shield against destitution – but to exercise the legal right to shelter, you need enough affordable housing units. In Ireland, homelessness is getting worse and worse, and that goes hand in hand with increasing rents and a decrease in social housing building. It’s plain that no amount of lawyering and advising people will stop all that: putting out a bunch of small fires around you won’t put out a forest fire.

What challenges have you faced so far in your work, and what have you learned from those challenges?

Sometimes you’re the first responder to clients when they’re about to be evicted or in other desperate situations—you hear them very distressed and have to try and answer their questions about practical realities, such as where do they put their stuff and what happens next? Those sorts of situations can take a toll, day after day. Luckily MLRC does self-care trainings, and knowing that you can probably help clients even a little bit, and that you have a team of people behind you, makes everything better.

On the more macro level, it can often feel like you’re swimming upstream—that no matter how much work you do—however much you write, lobby, or advocate, the figures on the number of people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness just keep stacking up on other side of the ledger.

What gives you hope in your work?

It’s encouraging to see all the local law students who want to volunteer with MLRC—who have a strong desire to forgo corporate law work for public interest law careers. It’s also wonderful to see the work of pro bono barristers and corporate law firms who help us out with legal cases and our clinics. Most of all, my coworkers’ inexhaustible energy to keep going is extremely inspiring. I’ve been there for just nine months, and while some days I feel bit worn down emotionally, then I see people who have been working there for seven or eight years having the emotional courage and strength of character to keep on going.