Dr. Eilionóir Flynn:

I looked into that in preparing for today's meeting to see if there had been public consultations on other conventions prior to Ireland's ratification of those treaties but I was not able to find much other than certain parliamentary questions to various Ministers about when we would ratify various conventions. Those questions are still being asked not only in respect of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities but on the optional protocol to the convention against torture and other issues. Those questions are still coming up but the same approach has been taken in the responses, which is that it is the decision of the Executive, that the Government agrees that it is important to ratify human rights conventions but it takes the position that it should not do it too lightly and so on. I did not find there was any great exploration of the issues but perhaps I am not aware of that and there were more extensive public consultations on UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Certainly it is not easy to find information about that in the public sphere.