Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I had a few questions I wanted to come in with. In speaking to our colleagues in the Spanish Senate, I was very struck by what Senator Escudero Ortega mentioned about playgrounds and that idea of participation. Can our guests comment on the importance of those aspects that are not necessarily the basic needs? So often it can be such a struggle to access education, healthcare and appropriate housing that is not institutionalised that the measures required to give access to those other aspects of life such as cultural participation and participation in public life and political life can sometimes be left to the side. Perhaps our guests can comment on that full picture within the UNCRPD in terms of full access, full expression of rights and full participation. What I like about that as well is that it flips not just the notion of society having an obligation to certain of its members but more the picture or the vision of the society we want, namely, one where we are all benefiting from each other. That is one piece I would like a little bit of comment on.

The other piece concerns the optional protocol and its importance, as that is a key focus for us today. Something we encounter again and again in the committee is individuals with a disability or sometimes their families who, as well as all the other challenges they must face, must take on a huge body of work in advocacy. They must spend many hours in advocacy work, not in creating new rights but in accessing those rights they already hold. One of the reasons I believe the optional protocol is important, which I would like our guests' thoughts on, relates to people who are engaging in that advocacy which can be so difficult. One of the hopes within the optional protocol is that when individuals engage in advocacy through its mechanisms, they do not simply win a resolution, outcome or improvement for their own situation but that maybe it establishes a body of case law so there is then a wider giving of that benefit rather than the same battle being fought in multiple places again and again. I also hope we will be looking to case law in other countries in the context of the optional protocol, such as at what was decided around what is a meaningful vindication of a particular article in a certain country. Will our guests comment on the importance of building up the interpretations that might flow from something like the optional protocol in shaping that wider implementation and delivery of the full vision of the UNCRPD?

I have another comment for our colleagues in the Spanish Senate. I was interested in the national vision and the local municipality embracing of that. What has been the experience of good things happening in a particular municipality getting extended? I refer to the flow back upwards whereby if there is a municipality or local authority showing leadership, how do we give it mechanisms to spread that? In this regard I am very conscious that the UNCRPD, like the SDGs, is universal in that it has a universal vision. I am hoping we get a flow whereby we are taking the best practice from a town in Spain and we are applying it in a town in Ireland, for example. I hope that will be the case for the SDGs as well as for the UNCRPD.

Perhaps there will be comments on those issue. I thank our guests again. It has been a really interesting discussion.