Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Ellis will know, Ireland's approach to the implementation of the UNCRPD is one of progressive realisation. It is gradual, extending the rights and improving the systems, and I believe the change we are about to see from 1 March in terms of bringing disability under one Department is part of that progressive realisation. That is a process that has gone far too slowly, and no doubt Deputy Tully will have words to say about that, as she has in the past. It has gone too slowly but it will happen from 1 March.

In terms of the barriers towards the ratification of the optional protocol, we have always identified the continued existence of wardship and the fact assisted decision-making was not implemented. As the Deputy will know and I think he was probably in the Oireachtas at that time in 2015, an assisted decision-making Act was created but never fully implemented. My focus in the disability area has been to address that through the amendment Act that has finally been passed. Again, that took a long time. We were able to strengthen the amendment Act and issues came up, particularly issues that were raised by disabled persons' organisations, DPOs, and mental health organisations during the process. I had hoped, as I think the Deputy will recall, to get it passed by June of last year but some important issues were raised by DPOs about its content, so we took the summer and strengthened it. I know issues remain with it, especially around the availability of advanced healthcare directives, but we were able to broaden their accessibility and that is something positive. We also got strong commitments from the Department of Health in terms of the work it is doing.

That legislation is now in place and we are now setting out a set of regulations because the system is - I will not say complex - is a detailed system. We are creating a whole new decision support service and that needs regulations because we are dealing with people who have a vulnerability and often some limitations on their cognitive ability. Therefore we must make sure there are protections in place, and those protections will be set out in secondary legislation. We are working on a plan and there are five sets of regulations that need to come out and are being worked on at present. We will write to the Chair when we have a better idea of when they are going to apply, when the full DSS is up and running, and when we have the final date for wardship. Once we have that fully worked out, which we are working on right now, we will write to the committee and let it know.

That was the key obstacle to the ratification of the optional protocol and that has now been removed. What we want and we think is right, because we are making a commitment at an international level, and it is important we feel confident as a country that we can make that commitment in terms of giving people the right to bring Ireland to the UN committee in terms of an individual complaint, something I want to see people do, is that we as a country feel we have all the other elements right, so that is why we are doing this scoping exercise. I do not know in detail what it will give rise to but we hope that scoping exercise will be completed by Easter. I might be in a position to talk to the committee again at that point in terms of what it has indicated and, if there are other barriers, which it is to be hoped there will not be, how we propose to address them.