Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask for a debate on the new interdepartmental group to accelerate the work on ratifying the protocol of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. We have heard so much about this, with dancing around the corridors and setting up groups here, there and everywhere. We now have a group on the optional protocol. We are supposed to have done this already and I would very much like to have a debate on it. I ask that the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, come in here to outline what exactly this interdepartmental body will do and what the Department of children, as lead Department on this, is doing already with all the other Departments. As a member of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters, I see that no other Department is taking this on board wholeheartedly and fully.

While I welcome anything related to the ratification of the optional protocol, we have to be very clear here. After all local remedies have been taken care of, we would then be able to use the optional protocol and bring the matter to the UN. Perhaps as part of this interdepartmental committee, which will hopefully report very soon, we can start talking about the local remedies open to people with disabilities. I am not putting the onus on people with disabilities to take this country to court when it is not upholding the UNCRPD, but we need to be able to know what we can do because it is very clear that we are dancing around the corridors on the implementation of the UNCRPD in so many ways. An awful lot of actions are being taken but it is not enough.