Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to speak to amendment No. 65. The Disability Act 2005 takes an overly medical model approach to the definition of disability as compared with the conceptualisation of disability under Article 1 of the UNCRPD. The UN's understanding of disability is broader than that covered under the Disability Act and is more inclusive of and reflective of different experiences, including for people who have experience of mental health services but who do not identify with any label or diagnosis, and for people who have experienced disability-based discrimination even if they do not themselves identify as disabled people. Given that the function of the IHREC disability advisory group is to support IHREC's work on the UNCRPD, it would be more appropriate to take the UNCRPD's approach to disability rather than the narrow definition of disability in the Disability Act.

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