Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The failure of successive Governments to vindicate the rights of people with disabilities is testified to by many failures. However, one that sums it up is that for 11 years, there was a campaign by people with disabilities and disability activists just to get governments to honour their commitment to ratify the UNCRPD. It took 11 years of campaigning from the first commitment to ratify the UNCRPD to its actual ratification in 2018. It was only because of relentless, ongoing protests by the disability community that it finally happened. It is sort of laughable that the Minister said the Government will ratify the optional protocol at the first available opportunity. The first available opportunity was when the Government ratified the UNCRPD but it did not ratify the optional protocol then. That was a conscious decision because the optional protocol would make the Government accountable for making the UN convention a reality, and give accountability and recourse to people with disabilities if a government failed to vindicate their rights. That is why the Government has deliberately not ratified the optional protocol. It has deliberately refused to do so.

The Green Paper further underlines that point. It is an absolute insult. It is a Tory-style league table of disabilities driven essentially by an organised suspicion that people with disabilities are somehow conning the State, and by the Government looking for ways to cut off their payments and force them into inappropriate employment. That is the reality of the Green Paper. That is how it was perceived by the disability community because the Government did not consult with their organisations-----

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