Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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I move amendment No. 3:

In page 6, after line 34, to insert the following: “(2) A court shall construe this Act in a manner that gives effect to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities done at New York on 13 December 2006, and for this purpose the court shall have regard to the provisions of the Convention, including its preamble.”.

I welcome the Minister. This is a complex Bill and, to be fair to him, there is an honest attempt to promulgate legislation for what is a complex area.

In this amendment, I wish to ensure that the language around the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, which was concluded in 2006, is firmly embedded in the principal Act. Now that we have ratified the convention, I seek to embed an explicit requirement for courts to interpret the Act in a manner that gives effect to the convention, thereby strengthening the potential for it to be interpreted in a manner compatible with the human rights obligations under that convention.