Mr. Justin Moran:

I can only imagine that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade would have been allocated lead responsibility for this as an international treaty as part of international negotiations. A treaty like this cuts across so many other Departments and many different policy areas. I am sure committee members are conscious of the fact that once it is the responsibility of one Department, the other Departments say it will take care of that and will push that forward and as it is an international negotiation, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is taking the lead.

We hope the Government will push the EU position forward or possibly consider going beyond it, as Slovenia has done, by supporting a convention on the rights of older people. The EU action plan on human rights and democracy commits the European Union to increasing awareness of human rights and the specific needs of older people, paying particular attention to age-based discrimination. There is commitment at EU level, but the difficulty, as Ms Sleap touched on earlier, is not that they are opposed to a convention, rather that they are not necessarily convinced of its merits. The obligation on organisations such as Age Action and HelpAge is to provide legislators and Departments with information and evidence to support the need for a new convention. We hope legislators will use their positions to write to Ministers and raise these as topical issues in the Dáil or Seanad to make sure it is taken seriously by the Department and moved forward. That is what we are looking for today.