Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman. I do not know what the Minister of State’s view is on this and I am aware that she was not the Minister of State back in 2015 when the UN treaty was ratified, but I find it extraordinary that after seven years, we are still at the point of scoping and of looking at what else needs to be done. If the Minister of State finds it extraordinary or unacceptable, please say so. She is the Minister of State for the Department and if she does not say so, we are going to assume that she thinks that this is okay.

Somebody, for example, who was perhaps seven years of age in 2015, is now 14 and suffers from severe disabilities and is not getting the attention that he or she needs from the State and does not have the right to go outside of the State to make a complaint. That is what a member of the UN committee on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said. I mentioned this the other night in my contribution on the rights of people with disabilities. Mr. Markus Schefer said at the Joint Committee on Disability Matters here that not ratifying the optional protocol has the optics that the Government does not really have confidence in its own system. The Minister of State has more or less said that now in a different way. Mr. Schefer maintained and told the Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters in 2021 that the Government needs to move on and ratify the protocol. He did not say that the delay was with the UN. I do not understand why the Government is putting this delay back on the UN committee.

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