European Commission of Human Rights
The Irish government on behalf of the men who had been subject to the five methods took a case to the European Commission of Human Rights ("Ireland v. United Kingdom", 1976 Y.B. Eur. Conv. on Hum. Rts. 512, 748, 788-94 (European Commission of Human Rights)). The Commission stated that it "considered the combined use of the five methods to amount to torture." This consideration was overturned on appeal, when in 1978 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) examined the United Nations' definition of torture. The court subsequently ruled that the five techniques "did not occasion suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture," however they did amount "to a practice of inhuman and degrading treatment," which is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 3.