Mr. Pat Clarke:

I wish to follow up on what Ms Costello and Senator Clonan mentioned. Last June, I met some of the committee members at the Conference of States Parties on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We asked the representatives of a number of DPOs from different countries whether they had ratified the optional protocol and many of them had. We then asked them a follow-up question as to whether anybody in their country had used it and they said that nobody had. They obviously did not need to or whatever else.

The big worry in discussing it here anecdotally with our civil servants and others is that they are very afraid that cases will be brought under the optional protocol even though it is so far remote that every other avenue must be followed before doing that. There is nothing to fear in the optional protocol. It should be done immediately and there are no grounds not to implement it. It is pure fear on the part of the civil servants in various Departments. They are afraid that there will be a slew of cases, but that is not the experience across Europe.