Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach stated that while the Government has a responsibility to do what is right, it also has a responsibility to protect the taxpayer. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, when speaking on "Morning Ireland" stated that the need to protect State resources had obscured the need to protect the vulnerable. He is reported as saying, "When the State is subject to legal actions, when it adopts legal positions, I think it's really important that those positions are influenced by the obligation that the State has to some of its most vulnerable citizens". That is the approach I urge the Government to adopt. I feel this is not about protecting public money. The State did not fight the church in court to get it to pay for all of the abuse it inflicted on children. It did not fight the suppliers of faulty cement blocks or the builders of shoddy apartments for their mistakes, or negligence, as I should say. It did not make them pay. The taxpayers shouldered the burden in those instances. The State will not make the strong pay but, if you are vulnerable or poor, you are deceived and robbed.

This State signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, in 2018. We should be bound by the commitments within that convention. I hope that the two Ministers will be guided by its contents as they carry out their review. I will speak on some of the convention's articles. Article 12 states that persons with disabilities should be given "the support they may require in exercising their legal capacity." Article 13 states that states parties should "ensure effective access to justice for persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others". People with disabilities also have a right to information. Article 23 specifies that people with disabilities have the right "to social protection and to the enjoyment of that right without discrimination on the basis of disability" and that the State "shall take appropriate steps to safeguard and promote the realization of this right". That was denied to the people in question. I know the UNCRPD was only signed in 2018. Now that we have signed and ratified it, we have an obligation to live up to these commitments.

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