John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

What do the recent Fine Gael Árd Fheis and "The Late Late Show" broadcast last Friday nigh have in common? One thing is that on both occasions the Taoiseach correctly referenced the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as one of the achievements of this Government. I was delighted to hear that. However, it is important that everyone from the top down - all Ministers, senior departmental officials and others - get the message that the treaty that we have bound ourselves to is now part of the business of every Department and public body, and that they all have work to do on it.

Yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As I have said previously, this was the first human rights treaty introduced by the United Nations after it was established following the calamity of the Second World War when the Nazis killed and exterminated more than 300,000 people with disabilities. Many of these people were German citizens, and it is sad that the Nazis did not see them as such. Life unworthy of living is what they called people with disabilities, people who were infirm and so on. Six decades later, the UN had to return to the issue of the human rights of people with disabilities because states had still not managed to make these rights happen for people. I will quote a little piece written by Eleanor Roosevelt, the chairperson of the committee that drafted the convention. When asked where do human rights begin she said:

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.

Ireland and all the states of the world have to address an issue they have not really got to grips with in the past 60 or 70 years by implementing the convention. I respectfully ask the Leader to arrange for the Taoiseach to come to the House and make a statement outlining the plan and ambition in all Departments to implement the convention. I make my request to the Taoiseach as the Head of Government. He said he would ratify the convention as soon as he was appointed and did so within a handful of months.