Dr. Fergal Lynch:

Apologies for that. Deputy Cairns's question concerns one of the most important issues we will be dealing with during this meeting. I have discussed the matter with the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte. When we spoke initially about ratifying the optional protocol at the end of the reporting cycle, this was on the assumption that the cycle would take a particular length of time, that is, until at some stage next year. It seems to be case now that there is going to be a significant delay on the UN end, as we understand it will be quite some time before we are invited to Geneva to speak about this. If that is the case, I can confirm we will be very open to ratifying the convention much sooner. We would like to do it as soon as possible but, obviously, logistics are involved and we want to ensure we have the proper systems and procedures in place to ensure we ratify it with meaning as opposed to just nominally ratifying it.

Our main concern relates to having this operational. As members will be aware, we have committed that the targets for that are for this time next year, in June. We hope the assisted decision-making capacity legislation, which deals with that, will have been enacted by the end of this year. With that in mind, if we can achieve that objective in that timetable, the Department and the Minister will strongly push to have the optional protocol ratified as soon as possible thereafter. If it is the case that the reporting cycle is significantly delayed, we will seek to ratify it well before the end of that reporting cycle.