Ms Sin?ad Gibney:

Thank you, Deputy. As I mentioned in my comments, this is a request we put into the Minister’s office for his Department to provide an annual statement to the Dáil. It was solely because of the delay in ratification of the optional protocol. We ratified CRPD in 2018. It is now five years on and it is important to point out that, when it was ratified, it was stated that the intention was to ratify both the treaty and the optional protocol at the same time. The reason given to us for the delay is key legislation that needs to be developed, going back to the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act and other legislation which the Department believed needed to be in place before ratification of the optional protocol. We reject that. There is no reason why we cannot ratify right now, why we could not ratify two years ago, when I attended my first committee hearing on the topic or five years ago when the treaty was ratified. It will take a number of years for us to see complaints come through the optional protocol. That will give the State plenty of time to put mechanisms in place.

I do not know if it is an official policy but it seems to be at least an informal policy for the State to have in place all key legislation before it will ratify these treaties and protocols. We are an outlier in that. Ireland chooses to adopt that approach but it is not a common approach across Europe. We were the last country to ratify the optional protocol in Europe, which is not good enough.

Making an annual statement at least to the disability community and autistic community, which have campaigned so hard for the ratification of the CRPD, would be a signal and would provide information around what is happening. If it is being delayed for such a protracted time - five years already since the ratification of the convention - at least we would have an update on what is happening and a clear roadmap on when the protocol will be ratified. That is what we are looking for with that statement but it has yet to come.